Every Fifteen Minutes
by Gixxer Pilot
Summary: Cop!verse AU. Chris Pike doesn't think his job description includes babysitting his partner. But after a particularly rough day at the office, he realizes that he can't just ignore his rookie partner any longer. Not if he wants to live, that is.
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: Every Fifteen Minutes

**Author**: Gixxer Pilot

**Summary**: Cop!verse AU. Chris Pike doesn't think his job description includes babysitting his partner. But after a particularly rough day at the office, he realizes that he can't just ignore his rookie partner any longer. Not if he wants to live, that is.

**Author's Notes**: Cop!verse AU. There are parts of the job in law enforcement that are downright horrible, and I felt that I needed to touch on it. So, I'm stepping away from the crazy crack for a bit with this piece. This story takes place not long after McCoy joined the police force, perhaps six or eight months. If you've read my other cop!verse pieces, you'll notice a distinct difference in Pike and McCoy's relationship as partners as you go along. That's intentional, and it'll give you all a good idea of where they started (circa this fic) and far they came (Accidentally on Purpose).

**Disclaimer**: I own nothing related to Star Trek, nor do I claim any origination for the program that inspired this story's title.

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><p><strong>Chapter 1<strong>

There was _something_ making an obscene racket near his head, and Chris Pike was hell-bent on figuring out what dared disturb his sleep. Step two was going to involve silencing whatever _it_ was, if necessary by deadly force with his service .40 S&W. He groped blindly until his fingers found the toggle switch on the bottom of the lamp situated next to his bed. Flipping it on, he winced against the sudden onslaught of light that flooded the room, temporarily rendering him blind. Chris blinked a couple of times, rubbed his face, and heaved himself out of his nice, comfortable bed.

It was his cell phone that was the culprit, alight in full, aggravating glory. He snagged it off the nightstand and walked out into closet to answer it. Chris' short venture across the room was two-pronged in reasoning; one, he wanted to avoid waking his sleeping wife if at all possible, and two, he wanted to go the fuck back to bed. Chris pondered the caller ID briefly before he flipped the small device open, barking a hushed but rather impolite greeting to the asshole that dared disturb him at 0240. "Whoever the fuck this is, the world better be on fire for you to be calling at this time of night. And if it is, call the goddamned fire department."

'_Whoa, Pike. Power down there, buddy_,' replied an amused and almost fatherly male voice._ 'It's AJ, from The Stumble Inn. Look, I know you just came off a rough shift and that I obviously woke you up, but I need a favor_.'

Sixty-year-old AJ Harris, sole proprietor and operator of one of the seediest yet homiest bars in all of Iowa, was a round fellow with a deep, commanding voice and an even bigger presence. A retired Army man, he returned stateside from 'Nam minus his left hand and bought the decrepit Stumble with the cash he received from his imminent danger pay and the sale of his classic 'Vette. The bar became his pride and joy, even though he was repeatedly told he was nuts for settling in a little Podunk, backwater town of Riverside, Iowa. AJ renovated the place from the inside out and rebuilt its reputation from the ground up. So successful was the little establishment that the bar predated many of the locals of the small community. After thirty-five years in operation, it became a staple of Riverside. Many places on Main Street came and went, but the Stumble, in the middle of the cornfield down the end of a dusty dirt road, was a landmark that was there to stay.

As much as the bar as a whole was woven into the tapestry of the town, Harris himself was quite honestly the bigger draw. He was always more than cordial to the patrons that stopped in and made everyone feel like they belonged, like it was home. Harris' bigger than life persona was the mystique and the draw of the place; AJ knew everyone by name and by face. Not only did he know exactly what each individual drank and how they took it, he knew their stories and their lives. It was one of the two big reasons Chris drove some thirty miles to go drink at Stumble when there were twenty perfectly good bars within Iowa City proper.

Pike blew out a big breath and scratched his head. There was no way he could bring himself to stay angry with a guy as genuine and jovial as AJ Harris, and Chris instantly regretted his snappish tone. He sank down onto the soft carpeting of the closet and ran one hand through his messy hair. "AJ. I'm sorry, I didn't recognize the number and it's been a long night."

A deep laugh answered his apology, signaling a universal acceptance. '_Don't I know it, Pike? It's okay, son. Apology accepted. It happens. Stress does that to a man._'

"Yeah, it can," he responded automatically before he could fully process what Harris just said. There was something strange about the way AJ was talking, and it normally would have had Pike on edge if he were more alert. The cryptic phrasing of the older man's sentences and the short, minutely pinched tone would have given it away to a trained observer in a heartbeat.

On the other end of the phone, Harris simply grunted while he waited for Pike to wake up.

Chris' sleep deprived brain muddled through Harris' words again before he raised one hand in forced habit. His brain was starting to turn over after stalling out, and Pike wasn't sure he liked the feeling. Furrowing his brows, Chris let a deep, disapproving rumble rise from his throat and sent it through the phone's receiver. In a throaty voice, Pike asked, "AJ, what are you up to now? I know that tone, and I don't like it. And I told you if you bought that damned scanner I was going to-"

'_Would you just stop and take a breath? There's no need to threaten an old man with an ass whooping_,' AJ insisted, interrupting the early onset of a Pike tirade and the coming threat of violence. When he heard the younger man breathe in a shaky breath, he started again. '_We all saw you on the news tonight. You know what I'm talking about. Looked like the news crew got there right behind you and that fresh-faced kid of yours." _

Silently, Chris seethed. He disliked very few things in life, but meddling news crews was definitely high up on his list. Though he understood they had a job to do just as he did, the extra element of having to babysit a curious reporter and her cameraman complicated an already intricate situation. He was told that the crew managed to grab some very dramatic footage of his work that wound up on the ten o'clock news. The images featured both him and McCoy, but Chris was still too wound up to want to watch it. Sighing deeply, he leaned his head back against the wall of the closet. The Adam's apple of his throat bobbed up and down when he swallowed once, then twice, before he replied simply, "Yeah."

Harris let silence ring over his end of the line, presumably waiting for Pike to make the first move. When the younger man said nothing, AJ added, "_What a shame that was, losing that high school girl like that_.'

Chris nodded his head without another word, feeling the twisted lump of emotions he thought he buried earlier in the evening tick up slowly to the surface. Forcing them back down, Pike replied, "It was," after taking a moment to school his voice back to the strong and secure cop tone.

'_Why didn't you come down?_' Harris asked, practically tisking at the younger man over the phone line. '_We could have talked, 'specially when you do something stupid that damn near got you roasted, toasted and burned to a crisp_.'

Inwardly, Chris shuddered, wanting to chase away the reminders of the night. "Aww, AJ. I didn't want to bother you with that. You saw the story on the news apparently – you know how it went," Pike began, cradling the phone in the crook of his shoulder while he picked at the gauze that encapsulated the back of his right hand. The bandage ran up to the middle of his forearm, but more than a protective barrier, it offered Pike physical confirmation that his night hadn't simply been a bad dream. Pushing the melancholy mood aside, he cleared his throat and said, "Besides, I only got a little singed. No big deal. I wasn't being an idiotic asshat like my rookie partner, who apparently is too dumb to listen to reason."

'_Can you honestly tell me you would have done anything differently if you two had been on opposite sides of that car?_' AJ asked. It was more of a statement rather than a question, and the silence from the other end of the phone confirmed the older man's suspicions.

Pike closed his eyes but instantly snapped them back open. Part of the reason he was so irritated with Harris when the phone rang was that he'd just finally fallen asleep after tossing restlessly for two hours. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the twisted remains of what was once a proud, classic American muscle car, wrapped tightly around the tree it impacted after skidding off the road. He could envision the dancing orange, red and blue flames licking at the paint and melting the metal of the totaled Camaro. He could still smell the sweet, wet grass and the salty mud. The memories of the gravel digging into the palm of his left hand and the sudden blast of heat on his face and arms were still raw and real. He could still feel the sinking sensation in his chest while he dragged McCoy backwards towards relative safety. But most of all, he could still smell the sickly, rotten smell of burning flesh emanated from the inside of the ruined vehicle.

It was not one of his better days at the office.

Shaking the images from his mind, Pike stretched his legs out in front of him. Chest bare and in only his boxers, he shivered suddenly, though he wasn't sure it was because of the open window in the bedroom, or due to the sudden onslaught of reminders. Reaching to his left, Pike set the phone on the floor and grabbed one of the blankets Lynn kept folded up in the corner of the walk in closet. He unfurled the handmade patchwork quilt and pulled it around his shoulders, letting the tail of the soft fleece fall over his lap.

Chris picked the phone back up and gave an honest thought to AJ's questions, knowing full well the man was waiting on his response. "No," he answered quietly. "Doesn't mean I like it, but we did our jobs, did the best we could with what we had to work with. We're not the fire department, and we sure as hell don't have their equipment in the trunk of our car. Don't you think I've gone over this in my head, AJ?" Pike spat out of frustration.

'_Of course I know you have. You wouldn't be you if you didn't_.'

Pike's grip on the phone tightened so much that the plastic creaked under the strain exerted by his fingers. "I don't know what else we could have done to pull off a miracle," he admitted candidly.

'_I believe you, Chris. And I know that you're right. But, I also think your man here would beg to differ on topic_,' he replied in the patented no-nonsense sort of way the barkeep knew Pike always appreciated. AJ leaned back in his chair and waited for the cop to connect the dots. Harris knew that Chris was nothing if not curious, and he was also aware that Pike couldn't help but walk right into the trap he just laid out.

"My man?" Chris asked predictably.

Harris knew that was as good as hook, line and sinker. '_Oh! I forgot to mention that, didn't I? Old age I guess. Yes, one of your men,_" AJ replied as if he was making an announcement in the bar. '_What? Do you think I'd call you at quarter to three in the morning just hear your cheerful voice?_'

"As much as I love to chat, I was wondering about that," Pike answered with a snort. "Who is he and what can I do to help?"

'_Never thought you'd get around to asking. We had this new fellow wander in here tonight. Nobody'd ever seen laid eyes on him before. Young, tall, good-looking fellow, but quiet. He reminded me of a like a fish out of water. Came in, sat down and didn't say but two words to me all night. No matter how hard I tried, the kid just wouldn't talk. But he could put bourbon shots back like the dickens, that's for damned sure. About cleaned me out of the Kentucky malt,_' Harris explained, his rich Texas accent like molasses coating Pike's ears.

Chris, obviously still missing the connection, replied, "If he's drunk and belligerent, call the local sheriffs. They'll take care of him and bring him to our station here. You have their numbers, I know. I gave them to you." Pike rolled his eyes and smirked. While he was still batting a solid zero on identifying where Harris was really going with the conversation, the sergeant did at least catch the paternal tone in the older man's voice.

'_Oh, his manners ain't the reason for my call. He's very well behaved for being as hammered as he is. You don't have to worry about that. Silent, really. No, what I was concerned about was how he was going to get himself home, and if he had anyone to look after him. I wasn't about to shove him in a cab for a thirty mile ride before I exhausted all of my options. It didn't seem right to do that_,' Harris said. '_You know me – it wouldn't be responsible of me if I didn't at least try._'

"You're nothing if not that, AJ," Chris answered with a laugh and a smirk. "All right. I'll bite. How does this involve me?"

Shifting the phone on his shoulder, Chris could hear the tape of the calculator as AJ added up the night's total receivables. The man was the consummate master of the art of multitasking, and it was probably part of the reason he could strike up conversation while tending the bar at the same time. '_We were squaring up at closing time while trying to figure out where to send the stragglers. I found your card on our silent guy, along with his Iowa City badge and ID when he tossed his wallet my direction. Thought I'd give you a call and see what you want to do with him._'

Pike rolled his eyes. Sometimes, AJ did really worry too much. "Dump his ass in a cab and send him home, just like you do with all the other drunks. I'm sure he'll sleep it off just fine at his own place, and I'll figure out who it was at roll call tomorrow when one of my guys shows up hungover." Chris, phone about halfway from his ear, was about to hang up before his ears caught AJ's voice faintly one last time.

'_The name on the ID was Leonard Horatio McCoy_.'

Pike froze. Of all the goddamn bars in the state, McCoy had to find his way to the one where everyone knew the sergeant's name. Realizing it was probably both a blessing and a curse, Chris growled under his breath. After a beat, he brought the receiver back up to the side of his head and said, "What? What did you just say?"

The same deep chuckle that Pike heard earlier reverberated through the phone line. '_Got your attention now, didn't I? The young man in front of me claims to be your new partner, and he needs some help finding his house. Think you can manage that, Pike?_'

Pike shot a longing look back toward his nice, soft bed. He wanted nothing more than to dump the phone down the toilet, crawl back into bed, curl up next to Lynn and sleep for the ensuing three days while he forgot his day ever happened. Despite what people claimed, ignorance, in some cases, was still bliss. But, he knew he couldn't just forget about his partner for a myriad of reasons. Growling, Chris pinched his eyes shut and answered, "I'll be right down."

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><p><strong>Next Up<strong>: Pike arrives at The Stumble Inn to pick up his partner and gets a lecture for his troubles.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Summary**: Modern Day Cop!verse AU. (Duh!) Pike plays taxi service to his absolutely toasted-drunk partner and learns a thing or two from an old friend along the way.

**Author's Notes**: First and foremost, thank you again to my awesome beta Wicked Jade (over at Live Journal - go check her stuff out. Seriously, it's awesome) for combing this puppy through and generally holding my hand while I wrote it. Although it's my sworn duty to put McCoy through the emotional wringer during this piece (which I hope I've sufficiently done), this particular chapter really is about Pike, and how others are challenging everything he thought he knew about how he should treat and think about his partner. Between AJ Harris and Chris' wife Lynn (in chapter 3), they'll knock some sense into his thick skill yet. As always, I hope you all enjoy it, and if you're so inclined, reviews are loved!

**Disclaimer**: Not mine. No money made. No money to be had. Don't sue for money, 'cause you ain't gonna get none if you do.

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><p><strong>Chapter 2<strong>

Driving was normally Chris' go-to play when he needed to calm down or sort through his thoughts. After spending a decade as a cop, it was second nature to pilot a car, and he did it without conscious thought. The familiar motion of the vehicle relaxed him, and the swooshing hum of the wind breaking across the windscreen and the vibrations of the engine were tactile reminders that he was free to exercise his need to keep his hands busy while his mind worked. During his military service, his duties consisted mainly of lying still while he called in firing corrections (simultaneously hoping he wasn't found and killed by the enemy), so the freedom of a directionless venture was a very welcome change.

But instead of the expected relaxation, tonight, Pike's drive was having a very precise but opposite effect. Wound up and tense, he made it to Stumble in record time. Aside from setting a land speed record on his way to his destination, he managed to work through exactly none of the reasons that were bothering him. Chris instead pulled into the muddy, soaked parking lot with more questions than answers, a revelation that frustrated him completely.

Perhaps part of the reason his brain wasn't willingly cooperating was the fact that Pike's mind was on more pressing matters, namely the condition of his partner. When he started tugging on some clothes on his way out the door, Lynn was silently glaring daggers at him for what she perceived as insensitivity (again) toward Len. He didn't really see what the big deal was, and walked to the car without another word. The only promise Chris made to his wife was that he would, "Take care of it." Whatever the fuck that actually meant, he wasn't quite sure. He had about thirty miles to figure it out, and out in his car (even at 0300) was preferable to being in a house when Lynn had an axe to grind and point to make.

But it really wasn't just her. Chris had a niggling feeling in the pit of his stomach that when he left his rookie sitting alone in the locker room after shift, McCoy wasn't as 'okay' as he claimed to be. But, Pike wasn't one to be nosy, and figured if there was something the kid needed, he would voice it. Besides, Len was an adult, and part of dealing with the stresses of the job was finding productive outlets to deal with the bad days. Though EMS workers weren't often shot at, they still had one of the most stressful jobs in all of civil service. He figured that McCoy had his own strategies all worked out, especially after a few years around the block.

…Or maybe not. With all the evidence in front of him, Chris was slowly beginning to realize that maybe he'd been wrong about Len's ability to cope. Pike sighed, gripped the squishy leather-wrapped wheel of his Audi A6 so hard his knuckles turned white and laid his head on top of his hands. He was a good read of people, so how was it that he was so off the mark with McCoy? It was both infuriating and embarrassing. Taking a deep breath, he sat back up, pulled the e-brake handle, dropped the shifter into second gear, and slid off the black leather seat. His boots splashed in a puddle, and he muttered out a curse before he reached the cracked cement sidewalk laid haphazardly outside the side door of the Stumble. Lifting his hand, the sergeant pounded the side of his fist against the thick, wide metal door in hopes that AJ would hear him over whatever Skynyrd song he was blasting at the moment.

Abruptly, Pike heard the cut out of the high, squealing notes of the climax to Freebird's four minute guitar solo as the barkeep pulled the needle off the vinyl record. The sound of shuffling feet against the bare floor was audible right before AJ stuck his head out the old door. "Chris. How are you, son?" he asked, accepting Pike's outstretched hand before he pulled the sergeant into a manly hug. Smiling broadly, he stepped back and gave the younger man a critical once over. AJ noted the dark rings under Chris' eyes and the slightly dazed but serious look on his normally youthful face. To the untrained eye, Pike simply looked tired, but AJ, as a military man himself, knew the symptoms of PTSD too well. Pike's haunted eyes also matched the expression McCoy was sporting when he walked in, albeit the former's more successfully shielded. Harris schooled his face, stepped back to allow Pike in the door, and added, "Thanks for coming."

"Thanks for calling me," Pike replied, shaking some of the excess water from the Iowa City PD hoodie he threw on in his rush out the door. Pike rubbed his hands together to stimulate some circulation in them, and to ward off the chill of a rainy, dreary Midwestern spring night. His eyes bounced around the hallway toward all the offices he knew were situated in a little corner on the side of the bar, looking for his charge. "Where is he?"

With a flick of his head, Harris motioned in a completely separate direction. "This way." AJ held the door open for Pike and motioned for the man to fall in step. Chris acquiesced, following the barkeep through the labyrinth of storage and soundstage setup equipment toward the back corner of the structure.

He wondered for a half of a second where they were headed before it dawned on him. The sergeant was a frequent patron of The Stumble Inn, but even he hadn't ever seen the deep recesses of the place. He knew AJ lived in the retrofitted and spacious apartment placed at the back, but until that moment, he wasn't sure how the man got there. Harris shepherded Pike around the back of the bar, past the offices, around the storage areas and toward a locked door at the end of the dimly lit hallway. He fished some keys from his pocket and unlocked the door placed at the end, leading Pike through the secondary entryway of his surprisingly detailed home.

Though the building was far from couture, the previous owners must have definitely enjoyed a flair for the Victorian era, given the look of the home they built onto the back of the bar. Dark wood flooring blanketed the entirety of the place; the only type of carpet in the home was present in the form of rugs. The Oak braces framing the hallways and the doors were ornately carved and stained with a natural wood varnish. The ceilings were all painted; from a deep maroon to a pale, olive green and even an ocean blue, the colors of the rooms reflected a very unique taste. The white mouldings adoring the top and bottom of the wall were thick and layered. The walls themselves were covered in various shades of highly decorative wallpaper that matched perfectly with the color of the ceilings. It was neither a space nor a design that Chris thought went with AJ's personality, the tobacco-chewing cowboy from Texas, but it worked. That, and Pike figured the older man was too lazy to change it.

Chris and AJ passed the stairs that led to the basement storage cellar and, hanging a right at the end of the hallway, stopped in the darkened living room. Pike stood still, waiting while he let his eyes adjust to the dimness of the room. The light from the entryway spilled into the living room in cracks and pieces, throwing shadows off the walls in odd places. Eventually, Pike was able to make out a lump of humanity sprawled out on the couch once his eyes switched to night vision. McCoy was lying on his back, uncomfortably crammed onto the sofa that was clearly too small to accommodate his entire frame. One leg was draped over the armrest while the other was dangling off the side. He'd thrown one arm over his face, but even through the appendage, Pike could hear the gentle snore floating about the room.

The cop had one foot up in the air when Pike felt a hand clap down over his shoulder. He spun, confused and furrowed his brows. "AJ," he whispered, "What do you need? I was going to get him up and get out of your hair."

Harris didn't reply but instead tipped his head toward the next room. Confused, Chris followed, simply out of forced habit. AJ ushered Pike inside his kitchen and reached into the refrigerator for a bottle of water. Grabbing two, he offered Chris one before twisting off the cap of his own and taking a long, satisfied gulp. The barkeep pulled out the chair in front of the cop and motioned for Pike to sit. Sticking his head into the main room, AJ made sure he could still hear McCoy's soft breathing before he pulled the sliding divider door closed between the kitchen and living room. Satisfied, he finally joined Pike at the table.

"What are you doing?" Chris asked in a hushed but full voice, spinning the water bottle around the table. He looked up into the older man's eyes, searching them for any kind of answer. Pike got nothing, and he certainly didn't like it. "It's almost four in the morning. Don't you want us out of here so you can get some sleep?"

"There are more important things than sleep right now," AJ stated flatly, eyes flashing as if he was back in the Army and about to discipline an unfortunate subordinate. Harris was most definitely a go-for-the-jugular type of guy and wasn't shy with his opinions. As such, if the man had a point to make, he would damn well go right ahead and make it. Leaning forward in his chair, AJ stared squarely at Pike with an expression that could only be classified as frustrated before the older man continued with, "You know, I'm disappointed in you. I would have expected better from a US Marine. I thought you boys didn't believe in leaving men behind."

The words stung with the harsh bite of truth, and Chris visibly recoiled. He felt his blood pressure rise again, since the stress from the night was making his normally lengthy fuse achingly short. "I didn't leave anyone behind, and if you're talking about McCoy, you're full of shit. He said he was fine," Pike replied tersely, almost defensive while he ran his calloused hands over his face and through his hair. With the smells of peanuts and beer wafting through the bar, Chris ached for the familiar weight of a guitar in his hands and the freedom of open mic night at the Stumble. He'd even settle a quiet few moments alone in his own home if he could use it to de-stress in his own way. Pike closed his eyes tightly and rubbed the temples of his forehead, hoping to abate the migraine he felt forming behind his eyes.

Tipping his head to the side, AJ replied simply, "What he said and what he is are two very separate things. You got eyes and a brain, Pike? If you do, I'd suggest it would be a wise idea for you to use them."

"I'm not his mother, AJ. If the man said he was okay, I have to believe him," Chris replied defensively, not at all liking the feeling that a friend was interrogating him.

"You can smell the booze on him from a half a block away. Does that look or sound like a man who's 'okay' to you, son?" with a general motion of his head toward the closed door. He fixed Pike with a pointed, disapproving stare that probably made a few PFCs piss their pants in terror before he crossed his arms over his broad chest.

Pike opened his mouth to answer, but then thought better of it. AJ Harris rarely, if ever, got mad, but Chris could see that the man was on the verge of a very good angry tirade. He'd seen the expression once before when a true douchebag of a man made patronage of the Stumble. The abusive, loudmouthed punk got a crash course in how a gentleman should treat a lady, and how that same gentleman dealt with human trash who thought it was okay to use a woman as a punching bag when AJ made his point by knocking out the kid's front teeth.

Suddenly, Chris had a much clearer understanding of the abject fear the man must have felt, seeing the cold, hard expression on AJ's face right before he was tossed out on his ass. It was, in a word, frightening. But, before Pike could automatically retort in defense, his mind rolled back to the uneasy feeling coursing through his body during the drive over. Instinctively, he knew Harris was right, as was Lynn. AJ just said aloud what Chris knew but didn't want to admit, and now it was two against one. In a word, he was sunk.

AJ sat and watched the emotions and the thoughts parade across Pike's normally composed face. The stress lines made the young sergeant look older, but they weren't nearly as pronounced as the ones he saw on McCoy. Harris prided himself on the ability to correctly guess ages, but even he was stunned silent when Len pulled out his ID to verify his date of birth. He remembered a distinct feeling of shock when he held the small piece of plastic in his hands. AJ simply stared at it, simultaneously wondering just what could make such a young man look so old. Wordlessly, the barkeep handed Len back his ID while he contemplated the sudden squeezing sensation occupying his chest, and how best to chase it away. It was obvious McCoy's goal was the same, so when the young man ordered a double shot of Kentucky bourbon, Harris poured two glasses. He slid one to the McCoy, raised his own in silent salute to whatever it was that was on his newest patron's mind, and tossed it back.

It bothered him all night, why the dark-haired stranger seemed so familiar, and half a bottle in, he still had no more answers than when he poured the first shot. But when a replay of the ten o'clock news flittered across the room, Harris heard McCoy actually speak a full sentence for the first time all night. Albeit slurred, he growled to the bartender to turn it off. It was almost as if a light bulb went off in Harris' head – McCoy was the young man AJ saw on the news with Chris. Admittedly, after all the bitching Pike did in the past eight months about his new partner, Harris expected McCoy to be a lot more…difficult, to say the least.

After their rather unconventional icebreaker, McCoy finally started acknowledging Harris' presence other than to ask the man to pour him another drink. What started as nondescript grunts or one word answers morphed into three or four word half-sentences. While he knew he hadn't gotten the full story by closing time, Harris was able to convince the young man to crash on the couch in the apartment while he found McCoy a ride home.

He just omitted that the cab service was one Sergeant Christopher Pike.

With a sigh, AJ stood up and motioned Pike to follow, knowing that he made his point. With a much softer, more paternal look on his face, he laid a hand on Chris' shoulder. "I couldn't make him go home, not like that. Whatever happened, whatever he saw, it's eating him. Kind of like when I first met you," AJ said with a pointed but friendly glare over the tops of his reader glasses before he slid the divider open.

Pike's spine stiffened, his stride hitching momentarily. AJ was already across the room, stooping next to the side of the couch by the time Chris recovered enough to move. Shaking his head, Pike took three quick strides in time to hear Harris grunt as he knelt down next to the obscenely upholstered piece of furniture, knees protesting mightily. AJ tapped the base of the touch light next on the end table, turning the light on as low as possible. The lamp's soft, warm glow was barely higher on the lumen scale than that of a single candle's weak flame, but even that small amount was enough to draw a strangled groan from the figure strewn across the old sofa.

Chris stopped, leaning over AJ's shoulder while he watched McCoy lever his eyes open. Confusion flittered across his face and his unsteady gaze bounced around the décor of the living room. His eyebrows furrowed and his face pinched, and Pike could almost see the wheels attempt to turn. Len opened and closed his mouth twice, finally quipping with a heavy slur, "I got drunk in a bar, and now I'm waking up in Pride and Prejudice. This must be hell."

Despite the tension winding around the inside of his chest, Chris couldn't help but let out a chuckle. While most of the department was convinced McCoy was a robotic automaton who was capable only of growling and swearing, Pike, as his partner, was treated to the wittier side of the young cop. Len was the only police officer on the payroll who could stop a full-out bar brawl with a couple of well placed insults, all done without ever breaking a sweat. Pike found himself often shaking his head in disbelief for being bested by his rookie. It was embarrassing.

McCoy would probably be plenty embarrassed in the morning (and in some serious pain), but for the moment, Pike knew he had bigger issues to worry about. The main roadblock keeping him from his home and more specifically his nice, comfortable bed, was a couple hundred pounds of drunken partner. Selfishly, he knew he could simply turn around and walk right out the door. AJ, without actually saying so, gave Pike the distinct impression McCoy's destination was never anywhere other than a friendly couch. It was simply a matter of deciding which one. He easily could have left his partner in Harris' capable hands in trade for a night of uninterrupted sleep. But whether it was the right thing to do, well, the jury was still out on that.

Chris was jarred from his internal debate by a scratchy, tired voice from the vicinity of the couch. While he was contemplating the best way to extract himself from the bar whilst still keeping his balls attached to his body from the inevitable Wrath of Lynn, McCoy apparently managed to open his eyes enough to recognize one of the two figures in the room. His gaze locked with Pike's, and narrowing his eyes, Len pointed one shaky finger up at his partner. "Goddammit, I can't even get away from you in the 18th Century," he spat out, eyes unfocused and glassy.

On his left, Harris let out a loud snicker, but Pike was simply perplexed. Replaying his partner's words once and then twice, he still had no idea what the hell McCoy said. Chris shot a helpless expression over to AJ and raised his hands, palms up in a gesture of surrender. "It's ass o'clock in the morning, and I didn't get a word of that. What did he just say?"

"Well, it's a good thing I'm fluent in every dialect of Drunk. Otherwise, you'd be up the creek without the paddle, son," Harris replied in a low but light tone. He executed a fine double take and added, "You're a cop, Pike. You're supposed to be able to understand drunks, since according to you, that's what you spend the majority of your calls clearing."

Pike scoffed loudly. "I arrest the drunks. I don't have to listen to them. The handcuffs are one of the perks of the job," he said with a shrug, ignoring the amused expression Harris shot his direction. Chris shook his head and looked down, refocusing on the task at hand. "Should we do this shit?" he asked McCoy.

"Whatever you say, _boss_," was Len's sarcastic, snarky reply.

With the help of Harris, Pike pulled McCoy up and off the couch, ever-mindful not to hit the bandaged burns on Len's right hand and arm. Had Chris not been so utterly frustrated at his partner's inability to balance his own body weight, he might have seen the humor in the situation. In the process, Pike decided two things: 1) McCoy was much denser than he looked, and 2) He really needed to get back into the damn gym. Throwing one of Len's arms over his shoulder, Pike let his partner find his balance before he started moving toward the door. He tossed a 'thank you' over his shoulder in Harris' direction as he shuffled back through the bar towards the exit and his car, which AJ returned with a friendly wave.

Muttering to McCoy to keep his damned feet moving and stay awake, Pike finally made it out the door and to his car. He propped McCoy up with his hip against the rear passenger side while he fished through his pockets to find his keys, cursing himself that he hadn't thought to pull out the remote beforehand. Chris found it, pressed the button and opened the door. He turned his body so Len was facing away from the vehicle before the sergeant gave his rookie a gentle shove. Without Pike there to support him, McCoy stumbled, nearly whacking his head on the doorframe of the Audi. The sergeant's hand prevented a possible concussion, and Len folded himself into the passenger seat with only a muted grunt.

Chris sighed, counting backwards from ten in his head while he nudged McCoy's shins with the toes of his boots. It was more like a kick, but either way, it was a silent signal to the younger man to pull his feet in the vehicle, which Len eventually did. Pike braced one hand against the open door frame and stuck his head into the car. He grabbed the seatbelt from its neutral position and fastened it around his partner's nearly limp body.

The dim light of AJ's home hid quite well the clearly troubled face. Against the bright glow of the car's interior dome light, Pike saw exactly what Harris was trying to get at when he sat Chris down at his kitchen table. The fact that the younger man smelled like a goddamned distillery not withstanding, McCoy's expression was pinched and wound up, his breathing short and shallow instead of deep and relaxed. Pike felt the first pangs of regret pulsing in his stomach while he studied his young partner's face. He swallowed hard before he started to pull his head away, stamping down hard on his feelings because there was no _way_ he was feeling any kind of remorse. None. No, he was only doing this to keep because he was the sergeant and AJ happened to call him. That was all. One hand on the doorframe, Chris paused while he ran through his list of (crappy) options.

A half second later, McCoy, whose timing was always wonderful, chose that exact moment to crack one eye open long enough to ask, "Where we going?"

That was a good question. "Home," Chris answered automatically, mentally kicking himself for a response that came out far too easily. Pike walked around the car without another word before he slid into the driver's seat.

Len nodded and let out a little grunt before his eyes slid closed again. His soft snore and occasional snort quickly followed, signaling to Chris that it was time to go.

As if his night hadn't been interesting enough, Sergeant Chris Pike was about to bring his extremely intoxicated partner back to his house, voluntarily no less, and with every intention of actually caring for the man. In his head, Pike checked off about a dozen of the personal rules he was breaking doing it, while at the same time hoping it wouldn't be too weird in the morning when Len sobered up. Chris sent a silent prayer heavenward to whatever long-abandoned deity to whom he claimed allegiance during his youth, because a little divine help would be nice to get him through this, thanks very much. But whatever happened, it was going to be a long night.

Pike stuck the key in the ignition, started the engine and popped the car into reverse. The tires crunched over the gravel of the Stumble's parking lot as Chris pulled the car onto the deserted country road. '_Sleep is overrated_,' he thought with more conviction than he should be able to muster at such an ungodly hour. As fast as the thought came, it went, replaced instead by, '_Yeah, keep telling yourself that, asshole. Maybe one day you'll believe it_.'

Yeah, he'd believe that the very same time he'd believe that he and his straight-laced, guarded, jaded rookie partner could ever be friends outside the job. Even if the idea was novel, Chris saw no way possible to make it work. But, as his wife often told him, he needed to look on the bright side more often. Just because he saw the worst of humanity on a daily basis didn't, in Lynn's mind, mean he couldn't extend the proverbial olive branch to his fellow man every once in a great while.

'_Small steps, Chris. Small steps_,' he thought with a sigh.

It would be nice one day if the all the self talk bullshit actually worked.

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><p><strong>Next Up<strong>: Chris arrives home just in time for his wife Lynn to voice her opinion about the situation. And by 'voice her opinion,' what she really means is 'lecture her husband for his own damned stupidity'. She is, without a doubt, _not_ pleased. Oh, his night just keeps getting better and better.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note**: Once again, thank you to Wicked Jade for the awesome beta work. I would have had this chapter out sooner, but it was being a stubborn little thing. But, I'm happy with how it's turned out, so hopefully it's worth the extra bit of wait. As always, comments are loved (but never required). Enjoy!

**Disclaimer**: Purchasing the netbook from which I'm typing and posting this chapter was something that required research and careful thought. If buying something for $200 required that much effort, I doubt I could own Star Trek or make any profit from my work. Please don't sue.

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><p><strong>Chapter 3<strong>

In life, there were certain definitive constants. In the same way she counted on the refreshing light of the rising sun in the morning and the relaxing dimness of it setting at night, Lynn Pike expected that each day, her husband would go off and do his job. Chris loved it, and there would never be any way she could ask him to give up his passion for the safety of a desk and a white collar nine to five. Like it or not, it was part of the trade off she accepted as a cop's wife. She was fully aware that nothing was guaranteed in one of the most dangerous professions in the world, not even the right see the end of the night.

Lynn tucked Ethan in for the night and was about to start cleaning up the kitchen when the lead off news report filled the screen. She saw the telltale flashing blue and reds of the light bars filling up one side of the TV, and out of force of habit, looked over to see what the story was about. Through the news crew's lens, a dramatic scene was unfolding in front of her with two very familiar faces taking center stage – Chris and his partner Len. Lynn sucked in a breath and unconsciously moved into the living room, sitting down on the overstuffed couch. Her eyes were stuck on her husband; the images nearly mesmerized her while she watched the rescue in progress. Chris pulled one person out of the wrecked car, laying the young girl on the ground before he started first aid. Over the sound of the irritating reporter's voice, he looked up long enough to yell something to his partner.

Suddenly and without any warning, the car exploded, lighting the entire frame on the TV a bright, angry orange. When she saw the fireball and heard the concussive sound of detonation, she felt her heart skip a beat. The camera shook, presumably as the crew momentarily took cover, and for a couple of seconds, all she saw was a shot of the one of the most beautiful purple-blue-red-orange sunsets she'd ever seen. After what seemed like an eternity, the picture panned back in time for Lynn to witness Chris shield face with his arm while he dragged his partner back from the burning wreckage of the ruined vehicle.

It had been a very long time since she felt that kind of gut-wrenching terror on her husband's behalf. The rest of the night was a blur as Lynn tried and failed to occupy her nervous hands with something – anything – to keep her mind from drifting back to the images she saw on TV. She couldn't wait for him to get home, and when he finally walked back in the door, defeated and weary, she pulled him into a hug with the intent of holding on for the next three years. Her macho, US Marine husband assured her he was okay, and even though she could see through the very obvious façade, Lynn knew not to push him any father on the subject. She was simply thrilled he wasn't hurt more seriously than a couple of burns on his hands and arms, because she knew it could have been much, much worse.

But as happy as she was to see him, Lynn couldn't help but feel a small measure of irritation that he made no mention of the condition of his partner. McCoy, in most cases for Chris, was an afterthought at best, or a non-issue at worst. Her husband didn't see the same gentle qualities in and about the young man as she did, though that fact didn't come as any kind of surprise. Chris instead preferred to keep McCoy at arms' length rather than initiate what would probably be a very good friendship if it were allowed to develop. Despite the fact that he'd thawed considerably after she invited Len to Christmas dinner, Chris was by no means friendly with the young man in anything other than a professional sense. As a cop's wife and a modern woman all wrapped up into one, she would never proclaim to understand the old-school cop mentality. Even if she didn't always respect it, she still had to live with it.

So when Chris got up out of bed at oh-dark-thirty to go on a drunk run to retrieve his partner, Lynn wasn't sure how she should take it. It was no secret she'd been at odds with her husband over how he handled McCoy, and it became a bitter spot of contention for the pair over the winter. On the flip side, Lynn was also smart enough to take progress when she could get it, which meant she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth when her husband voluntarily went on his errand.

What he returned with (or rather, whom) did surprise her, however. She honestly expected Chris to either leave the man with AJ or to dump McCoy off at his place with little regard to how he would fare alone. But her husband's grim face said it all, and Lynn felt her stomach clench when, for the briefest of moments, her gaze locked with Len's on their way in the door. Even a bottle of liquor couldn't hide the hurt and pain she saw in his green-grey eyes, and it made her shudder. It also strengthened her resolve to be an ally to McCoy, because it was abundantly clear the young man needed one.

"Mrs. Pike," McCoy muttered with heavy, uncooperative lips and through half-lidded eyes as the two men passed. He stumbled over his own feet, only saved from falling on his face by the wall on his right and Pike on his left. A self-deprecating chuckle escaped his mouth while he found his fledgling balance, which was followed by the announcement of, "I think I'm a little drunk."

"A little?" Pike snorted, raising an eyebrow before he shifted his hold on his unsteady partner. He grimaced when McCoy's belt caught a tender piece of his singed arm, rubbing the scratchy gauze against his raw skin. Muttering under his breath, he added, "Jesus Christ."

Lynn shook her head and gaped just long enough to take a breath before squared her shoulders and pushed past Chris and Len. She motioned with her head towards the hallway of the rambler-style house. "Sit him at the table while I get the guest room made up. I wasn't expecting company tonight," she said. The last part of the sentence, resigned and weary, was clearly meant for Chris, and he made the wise choice to keep his mouth shut. But the icy glare she shot him, the one that accompanied her sentence, left absolutely no room for misinterpretation. They were _not_ done talking on the topic of one Leonard McCoy, and it was abundantly clear 'upset' was not nearly a strong enough word.

While Chris brought McCoy in for a rough landing at the kitchen table, Lynn walked past the pair and snagged a tall glass from the cupboard next to the sink. She filled it up with cool water from the tap and set it in front of Len, letting out a soft whistle when she was able to take a good, close up look at the man's condition. 'Low' was the only word she could think of at 0400 in the morning that accurately described what a fine mess of a man Chris dumped at her kitchen table.

McCoy's face was liberally sprinkled with stubble and his normally impeccably neat hair was messy as if he'd been running his hands through it all night. The black t-shirt he was wearing, the one that proudly proclaimed that, 'I arm-wrestled Johnny Cash,' was hopelessly rumpled under his green cargo style jacket. His lightweight blue jeans hung low on his hips, and Lynn could smell the pungent odor of the beer he'd picked up on his shoes and on the bottom of his pants from the floor of the Stumble. And although Len clearly tried to drink away his feelings, the dark circles under his eyes were still present and accounted for, along with the exacerbated lines around his mouth and eyes.

"My God, Leonard. What have you done to yourself?" Lynn asked with a sad little smile. Her hands ghosted over the identical bandages cocooning McCoy's right hand and arm, mindful not to apply too much pressure, as she searched for physical confirmation he was as uninjured as Chris promised. But she barely caught her hand as it made its way up, seemingly of its own volition, to smooth out an errant chunk of hair sticking to Len's sweaty forehead. Instead, Lynn used the opportunity to point toward the glass she set on the table, saying to her husband, "Do you think you can manage to get him to drink that?"

"The whole thing?" Chris asked, eying the large glass with trepidation.

"Yeah, the whole thing, Chris. It'll help a little with his hangover. You know that."

Pike snorted, his mind flashing back to the often-spotty memories of some of his wilder, much younger days. "Don't I ever," he mumbled.

"Indeed. Now, when he's done, bring him in. I should be ready by then."

Pike shrugged and picked up the water, sighing heavily as he plopped his ass in the chair adjacent to his partner. He shook Len gently on the shoulder, careful not to upset the younger man's tenuous grip on his equilibrium. Chris said a couple of soft but awkward words McCoy responded to with a mumble of his own, accepting the glass with unsteady hands before raising it to his lips. Lynn watched the entire exchange, and satisfied that Len might get something in his body _other_ than alcohol, went off to make up the guest room.

Ducking back into her bedroom, Lynn rooted through Chris' side of the dresser for something appropriate for McCoy to wear. She pulled out one of his favorite pairs of long, worn, oversized basketball shorts and a matching black t-shirt. The latter was emblazoned with the Triumph Motorcycles logo spread in recessed gold and black lettering across the chest, and equally careworn and soft. Satisfied, Lynn slammed the drawers closed and headed next door to the guest room. She let her thoughts wander as she set up the amenities – aspirin on the nightstand, a big bottle of water and a bucket lined with a garbage bag (just in case) next to the bed.

Lynn was just turning down the comforter when she heard the telltales scraping of feet and shoes against the wood floor of the hallway. For once, she didn't care how badly her floor was being scratched or if she'd have to refinish it next year. She stuck her head out the door and, without so much as a word, moved around the opposite side of her husband and took up position under McCoy's right arm. The younger man was out on his feet; the alcohol, weariness and general exhaustion of the day were all finally catching up with him. In his left ear, Chris was mumbling encouragement in low, hushed tones, hoping he could get his partner to the bed without actually having to drag him there.

The trio mercifully cleared the doorway, and Chris set Len down on the bed as gently as he could. Lynn coaxed McCoy's right arm free from his faded jacket and pulled it clear from around his shoulders. He haphazardly flapped his left arm around when the cuff stuck to his watch, giving it a mighty, unsteady tug to dislodge it. Threads popped, and the garment eventually landed in a heap on the floor. McCoy's gaze flicked sideways, almost groaning in relief when he registered the feeling of a real bed and sheets beneath him, and the sight of a pillow close enough for his to reach. Before either Pike could stop him, Len toppled over sideways, grabbed the extra pillow, and curled up on his side.

Chris pursed his lips. "He was out before his head hit the pillow," he said with such softness in his voice that it made Lynn double take. It was the voice Pike normally reserved for his son, used only when no one else was around to hear it. Grumbling something rude to make up for the fact he about to show he cared, the sergeant reached out and grabbed one of McCoy's feet, gently picking at the laces of his partner's white Nike Air trainers.

There was no way she was seeing what her eyes were telling her. Chris Pike, her resistant, stubborn, hardheaded husband, was actually taking interest in his partner. As Len's right shoe hit the floor, a very unprofessional snort escaped her lips, which was followed by several muffled giggles. The sound made Chris' hands pause in mid-motion as they worked away at a stubborn knot in the laces of McCoy's left shoe. He turned his head so he was in profile to her viewpoint and simply shook his head while he pulled Len's shoe off his foot. Straightening, he grabbed both shoes off the floor and stepped back, which allowed Lynn to pull the covers over McCoy's prone form. She pulled the clothes off her shoulders and laid them on the chair next to the bed. "So much for getting him changed."

"Yeah," Chris mechanically agreed a second before his eyes narrowed in recognition, actually seeing the two garments Lynn just laid over the chair. "Hey!" he hissed, pointing. "That's my favorite shirt!"

Lynn shushed the sergeant with a finger and ushered him out the door. She closed it behind her just enough so a little bit of light would still filter in the dark room in case Len were to wake. Leaning against the hallway wall, she said, "Yes, it is, but it's the only thing we have that will fit him. Remember? He's bigger than you are."

"Not by much," Pike retorted automatically.

"Whatever, Chris. Now share." Lynn replied with an incredulous shake of her head.

"I don't have a problem with that, strangely," he said, expression perplexed and voice sounding nearly defeated. He scratched his head and sighed. Pike's shoulders slumped as he put his arm around his wife. He wrapped her up into a gentle hug and pulled her close to his body. "Go ahead and say it."

"Say what?" she feigned. In reality, Lynn knew exactly where Chris was going, and it was something she'd been itching to remind him the entire night. The only thing stopping her was her overwhelming concern about her husband and his partner. But instead, she tightened her grip around Chris' waist as they walked in stride down the hallway to their room. He leaned his cheek on the top of her head and dropped a kiss into her hair. Lynn smirked and bit her lip, finally saying the four words she'd been aching to say since he set foot back in the door: "Itoldyouso."

Chris shook his head and let out a quiet, light laugh. His eyes sparkled when he looked down at her, stopping in the middle of the hallway to embrace his wife. "Yeah, you did, didn't you? Damn you when you're right," he said. But as easily as the happiness appeared in his eyes, it dissipated just as rapidly when the pair passed their young son's room.

Ethan's door was open, and the five year old's room awash with the gentle glow from his Jack Sparrow night-light. Chris pushed the door open just a little farther so he could see his son's sleeping form. He needed visual confirmation that the little tiny chest was rising and falling from a child deep in sleep and dreamland. Pike felt some of the earlier tension unwind from his chest while he watched the most important thing in his life, safe and sound and away from all things that might hurt him. Ethan looked happy, content and innocent, which were three more adjectives than could be used for his father.

Lynn could see the troubled expression in Chris' eyes, and she gave her husband a gentle tug at the waist to snap him out of his reverie. "Honey, what's wrong?" When he didn't respond, she waved one hand in front of his face and whistled. "Hello? Earth to Chris? Anyone home? You're starting to scare me. What is it?"

Pike brought one hand up and dug the pads of his fingers into his eyes. He swallowed hard, the memories of the home visit he paid earlier during his shift to a random family he'd never see again still fresh in his mind. It made him shudder to think what he and Lynn might do if one day, God forbid, the roles were reversed and someone was visiting his house delivering the most awful news a parent could ever receive. He instantly pushed the thoughts away and said, "We're going to do everything right with him, make sure he'll make good choices and have responsible friends. I know that. But, what happens when that's not enough? What happens when someone else makes a bad choice for him?"

Lynn narrowed her eyes while she stepped out from under his arm. Warning lights erupted like klaxons in her head while she tried to make heads or tails of what, exactly, brought on such a sudden change in her husband's demeanor. She was perplexed; as a sergeant and ten-year veteran of the police force, Chris was no stranger to the darker sides of law enforcement. But he had a personal rule that expressly stated all badges were to be checked at the door, and that meant that no serious shoptalk was to be allowed in his home. He claimed it was because when he was home, he wanted to be _home_, instead of distracted while he thought about what he could have done differently from latest shift.

It irritated her. Really, it did. Lynn knew Chris' reasoning was complete and utter bullshit, but the knowledge that he could come home to someone who didn't expect him to he a cop every moment of his life kept him sane while he worked. However, she also knew he was doing it because he was still a chauvinist, thinking that his wife needed protection from the big, bad world.

Thank you, but no.

Placing her hands on hips, she fixed her 'death stare' on him and said, "Chris, what's going on? What happened tonight? You gave me the party version, but I want the truth. I think I've earned it by helping you with Len," she added as they walked into their bedroom. Lynn sat down on the bed and propped herself up with the fluffy, sham-style decorative pillow she grabbed from the floor. She glanced at the clock and sighed, knowing full well there would be no point in going back to bed when she was due to be up for work in twenty minutes anyway.

Chris joined her on the bed, sprawling across the massive width of their California King bed (his one indulgence when they'd purchased their house, and quite probably the reason for Ethan's conception) while enjoying the blessed feeling of decompression. Pike was tired himself; it'd been a hell of a long night, and he felt sleep tugging at his already heavy eyelids. He let his feet dangle over the side of the bed and laid his head in his wife's lap, letting out a low growl of contentment when she automatically started raking her fingers through his hair.

But as he was about to drift off, warm, safe and content, a thought struck him like a ton of bricks. Bright blue eyes snapping open, Chris looked up at Lynn and said after a beat, "You don't bitch nearly enough about my job. Why?"

Lynn's hand stopped its movement. She tilted her head to the side in baffled regard, face twisting up in bewilderment. The question was off the wall, and it caught her completely by surprise. Resuming her ministrations, she replied honestly, "Well, I could if you wanted me to. Believe me, Chris: there are times that I positively hate you and your damned job. But I don't because there would be no point."

He raised one eyebrow, genuinely surprised to hear such vehemence behind her voice and coloring her words. Chris shifted and asked, "Why don't you ever say anything? You know, I hear it all the time from the other guys, how their wives bitch and whine and moan about them doing something different, but other than the occasional eyeroll, I get nothing from you."

"And that's all you're going to get, my dear," she started. At her husband's perplexed expression, Lynn went on to explain frankly, "I hate you for being a cop sometimes. I do. There are some days I can't describe how much I wish you could have chosen something different that doesn't require the use of deadly force. I know you love it, but I hate your schedule, I hate your hours, and I sure as hell hate how dangerous it is. Even so, I couldn't ever ask you to stop being a badge," she said, pausing while she waited for his nod of approval for correct use of police lingo, "any more than I could stop making cakes."

"Please don't give that up. I like cake," he said with a cheeky grin.

Lynn rolled her eyes. "Yes, dear. I know," she said lightly, though her voice instantly sobered before she continued. In a much more grave tone, she said, "But, as much as you love my pastry skills, you know I don't do it only because I love it. Don't get me wrong – a big reason why I do what I do is because baked goods are my passion, but I also need a trade in case something happened to you. What if you died tomorrow, Chris? What would Ethan and I do? I have to have some way to support our son and me if you're not around. And if I can do it with sugar, I will. Just as I love my trade, your passion is law enforcement, I will never discourage it, even on days when it pisses me off."

Pike was silent for a few seconds, allowing her words to sink into his head. He never quite realized how deeply she was affected by his job on an emotional level. He knew it logically, but selfishly, Pike never gave her lack of complaints much thought. He swallowed hard, opened his mouth a couple of times while he tried to best formulate what he was feeling before he admitted, "That could have happened today."

"What?"

"I could have died," he answered flatly.

Lynn suppressed a full body shudder as the horrible images of a demolished car flashed through her mind. As hard as it was for her to think about the worst-case scenario, she knew it was even harder for her husband to admit it. It was, by all accounts, a big step. Sighing, she unconsciously wrapped her arms a little tighter around his shoulders. "I know," she replied unsteadily as she focused on their reflection in the mirror situated on top of their giant mahogany dresser. Lynn bit her lip and asked her question again. "You want to tell me what happened tonight now?"

"Not really, but I know you're not going to leave until you know what you want," Pike replied, his answer rumbling from deep in his chest. He let out another long breath and ran his hands over his tired face. Before he could talk himself out of it, Chris started, "I know you think I hate McCoy, but dammit Lynn, I don't."

"Oh really?" she scoffed, bristling as some of her pent up frustration with her husband came bubbling out. "You could have fooled me. Chris, before you start, just do yourself a favor and quit while you're ahead. You treat that young man down the hall as if he's an imposition to you, or you pretend that he doesn't exist at all. I'm not sure what's worse. Either way, that's not right because he's your partner, so you'll have to forgive me if I'm a little skeptical about your sudden change of heart."

"Exactly, Lynn," Pike said, cutting her off. "He's my partner, not my son. I shouldn't have to hold his hand. He's a grown man – he can do what he wants and take care of himself once we're off duty. We've had this discussion before."

"Yes, I remember that really well," she started. Lynn's eyes darkened and her voice dropped to a deadly hiss. This was about to turn into a replay of the previous winter, and she did not want to rehash that epic battle if she didn't need to. She could count on one hand the number of times she and Chris properly fought during their ten years of marriage, but the yelling, swearing, finger-pointing bout they had over McCoy right before Christmas was top on the list. "I distinctly recall that you slept on the couch for three days afterward because you pissed me off."

"Hey, you're not perfect here, either. You're always pushing me to make friends with the guy when I have no interest in it. I'm supposed to train him to be a cop, not be his babysitter. Being his friend is not part of my job description," Pike growled back at her. He could feel the tension winding its way through his frame again. After spending his entire night riding the hills and valleys of adrenaline, it was a tall order finding the energy required to bring forward such emotions when all he wanted was to go to sleep and stay there for a week.

Lynn, however, was having none of it, and since she wouldn't let the subject drop until she made her point, she exclaimed, "Oh, you are so full of shit, Chris! What did I tell you at Christmas? Did it not sink in then? Because if it didn't, let me go over it again: Len is not the type of guy who admits things out loud. He's the opposite of you – a true introvert. And he's not going to ask for help. Never. That's not how his brain works. He's going to suffer alone with the hope that someone might care enough to look. I know you won't because you're a stubborn ass who can't take off the old-school sergeant blinders, but guess what? I care. I care about him. Under all the snarling and growling, he's a very nice young man who's also alone here and could use a friend. I thought you could be that for him, which is why I've been pushing you on the subject."

"And I've also told you that, in my world, your way is not how it works! Period. It's not part of the job!" he half-yelled back. He straightened into an upright position and ran one frustrated hand through his messy hair. Chris' chest rose and fell quickly, his breathing rapid and shallow. His piercing blue eyes challenged his wife's gaze, but neither was willing to yield.

Lynn blinked first, challenging her husband with, "Why? Why can't it work? I don't understand. You know, we argued about the exact same thing at Christmas, and you couldn't explain it then. Why not?"

"Because!" he cried, bringing his hands up in balled up fists near his face. "That's just how it is! You don't wear a uniform, Lynn. You won't understand!"

Her jaw fell open silently, indignation brewing in her eyes. "Oh, so now because I'm not a cop I can't grasp the simple concept of human emotions? I don't think so, Chris. That's a horseshit answer and the easy way out, and you know it," she shot right back, crossing her arms over her chest and glaring at her husband. "What about you and Jack? Why can that friendship work so well, but not you and McCoy? Why is it so impossible for you care about Len like you care about Jack?"

"That was different! That _is_ different!"

"Why?" she questioned, eyes flashing as her father's temper took over the higher functions of her brain. Jabbing a finger into the mattress, she demanded, "Explain it to me now, because you're right: I sure as hell don't get it, and I don't get you."

"Because!" he started, pausing to take a deep breath before he actually broke into a full-out yell that would wake the entire house. "It worked because I didn't have to teach Jack anything. I didn't have to train him, and I wasn't responsible for his well-being," he finally admitted. "I told you before I'm not a babysitter, and I meant it."

Finally. Lynn knew if she pushed the buttons in the right order, eventually Chris would cough up the real reasoning behind his trepidation. She always theorized, but until he voiced it, it was simply that: conjecture. But now that she was able to get him going in the right direction, it was just a matter of guiding the ship to port. "So if you don't want to babysit him, then why in the hell did you bring him here tonight? May I remind you that you're the one who did that, not me. I didn't tell you anything other than you needed to take care of it, so don't you dare try and pass the buck on this one," she shot back.

Chris' face fell, all the fight seeping from his tired body. With a wry smirk, he looked up at Lynn and said, "Although it pains me to admit this, he's a good kid, despite being rougher around the edges than I was."

"I find that last part very hard to believe, my dear," she replied, feeling her heartbeat calm considerably as the anger rush faded.

"You don't ride with him everyday," he said, shifting so he wasn't sitting in such an awkward position. His right foot was beginning to tingle in that annoying early stage of falling asleep. Chris straightened the extremity, giving his foot a healthy shake to restart some of the previously cut off blood flow. He blew out a breath and flopped back down on the bed. He laid his hands on his chest, interlacing his fingers while he thought of what to say. More seriously he said, "He's got a chip on his shoulder big enough to cover the entire state of Georgia and a snarky attitude to match."

"Why do you think that is, Chris? Take a couple of seconds to think about it this time before you answer."

"I know what you want me to say – he's an insolent pain in my ass because he doesn't think he has anything to lose by being a cranky bastard. But the question now is do I agree with it?" he said, eyes roaming blankly around the speckled ceiling. After some hesitation, he said, "And I think the answer now is 'yes'."

"Well, hallelujah. He's getting it," she muttered.

If Pike heard her, he didn't acknowledge it, instead pressing forward with, "I was afraid for him tonight. You know, everyone says I have a hero complex, but his is ten thousand times worse. He absolutely has no regard for himself, and some days, I want to punch him in the face for it. He drives me nuts."

"And do you know why that is? It's because you care, Sergeant Christopher Pike," Lynn said in a much softer, much more loving voice as she took up a horizontal position next to him. She shifted until she was face to face with him, pillowing her chin on the backs of her hands. Smirking, she asked, "Are you getting soft on me?"

"Apparently," Pike snorted out before he shuddered. His eyes went blank before continued with, "I got the driver out of the car pretty easily, but her door was intact. She had cuts all over her body, which was where my attention ended up. I had a pretty good view of the underside of the car, and I could see the gas tank had ruptured and was leaking everywhere under the car. And then I saw the engine smoking, and I knew it was about to become a very, very bad day. I started to get up, but I had to tie off the tourniquet I was applying to my victim so she wouldn't bleed out, and I thought the time it took me to do that was going to cost me my partner."

"Where was Len?" she asked, trying to reconcile his first-person account with the pictures from the news report she saw earlier.

"He was on the passenger side, wedged between the car and the tree. The door and the window were both demolished and he was trying to get to the passenger who had been thrown into the backseat. I didn't see her and I'm sure she was already gone, but you know McCoy. He wouldn't give up, even when I was hollering at him to get his ass away from the damned car. Lynn, I saw that car go up tonight, and I thought I was going to be pulling back a dead man by the time I got there. Aside from what happened to Jack, it was the longest ten steps I've ever taken. And then we had to go tell the family, which was a million times worse than normal, if that's at all possible. McCoy looked like he was going to throw up on me the entire time we were there, and since he's in our guest room now, you obviously have seen the end results. And that brings me to my next question: now what?"

Lynn took a couple of seconds to digest her husband's soliloquy before tilting her head to the left. "Chris, as happy as I am that you just told me that, I want you to put yourself in Len's shoes for a few minutes. You've been around the block a time or two, so you're no stranger to stuff like this. It's terrible, but you have the ability to deal. How old is he? Twenty-three? Twenty-four? How would you have dealt with something like this at that age?"

"Not well, but I would have handled it," he answered honestly after some hesitation.

Nodding in agreement, Lynn continued. "And now, imagine that you're an introverted personality living in a place where you have few, if any friends outside your work, and that your macho attitude is a perquisite for earning the respect of the people who don't know you very well because you won't let them in. Finally, imagine all of that and add to it that you don't have a real support system or anyone to vent to like me, and I think you'll see why Len ended up in the shape he's in at the Stumble tonight."

Pike laid still and let all the thoughts swirling through his head compartmentalize themselves, drifting to the correct places in his brain. If someone were to listen carefully enough, it was almost an audible thing, how hard Chris was thinking. Snapping out of his nearly catatonic state, he licked his lips and said, "All right. You win. I can see how this is a problem."

"I knew you would," Lynn said triumphantly, rolling off the bed to head for the bathroom. "Just remember, Chris: whether you like it or not, he's our responsibility now. When you took him as your rookie, you signed yourself up for that job. He's got nothing here – no family and I'd guess no real friends, and despite that tough, I-hate-the-world attitude, it's not really who he is. Think about that every time you want to punch him because he's not listening to you, and ask yourself why he's doing it. It might help."

Chris pursed his lips silently and covered his face with his hands. "I am never taking another rookie partner ever again," he mumbled. "My wife is about to adopt mine, and there is not enough space in this house for anyone else." Smiling, Chris called after her retreating back, "But this has nothing to do with you being right. Again. Nothing at all. So don't be thinking this is going to be a daily occurrence!"

"I wouldn't dream of it, dear." No, Lynn wouldn't dream of thinking she should always be right. She would just dream of something else entirely.

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><p><strong>Next Up<strong>: McCoy is in for a rude awakening, both figuratively and literally.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Notes**: Gah! I just need to give up on the idea that I can write oneshots (or oneshots that turn into threeshots), because I just can't do it, Captain! I don't have the power. Ahem. *clears throat* No really, this story was supposed to be one chapter, and then it became three, and now we're up to six. Sorry. My tribbles have been eating, apparently. Most of the next two sections are from McCoy's POV, which was not an easy thing for me to do. I think I've finally got it right, after fighting with it for the better part of two weeks. As always, thanks to my awesome beta Wicked Jade for smacking me when it sucked and telling me when I was in the right neighborhood. Enjoy!

**Disclaimer**: "Your family's poor, Kenny! I said, your family is peerrhhh!" Yeah. I don't own Trek, nor do I own South Park, even if that quote is kind of fitting for me right now. I make no profit from this monetarily and I only do it because I'm insane and I like to torture myself.

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><p><strong>Chapter 4<strong>

If there really was a God in heaven (or…wherever the fuck He lived), and that God was indeed merciful and benevolent, Leonard McCoy wondered if He'd be so kind as to put the young cop out of his misery. A bullet would have done the job nicely, or as Len preferred it, a spectacular and obscene bolt of lightning. Of course, that would mean said God actually existed in the first place, and in McCoy's mind, the jury was still way out on deliberations for that topic.

Good _Christ._

Len wiggled his fingers. Excellent. Hands were still there. That was always a positive sign. He brought the appendage up and scrubbed the palm of his left hand over his tired face, leaving it over his eyes as a shield against any unfortunate sort of light ray that dared invade his vision. Maybe if he kept his eyes closed, he would stay safely ensconced in his own little world, one where most of the previous night stayed a total blur and where – what the hell? Was that a lawnmower buzzing outside the window? The sound intensified to a high crescendo right outside the glass pane, and McCoy whimpered pitifully as his head gave a particularly vicious throb.

Thinking was beyond painful, but even with a half-functioning brain, he still knew enough to know that there was no way anyone would mow the deck of his apartment. It was on the third floor, for Chrissake, so it was obvious he wasn't at home. A sense of confusion and a touch of panic trickled through his foggy brain, and for the briefest of moments, he wondered just where the hell he was. Taking the plunge, McCoy cracked one eye open and looked around.

From the properly blacked-out feeling of uneasiness crawling through his mind, it was clear he went out drinking the night before. Where that was he couldn't quite recall, but McCoy supposed things could have been worse. He was no angel; after a hard of partying, Len distinctly recalled waking up in some seedy places before. Considering now that he still had all his clothes and that he wasn't a guest of the Iowa City jail, well, at least two facts were going in his favor.

Blinking some sleep from his eyes, Len craned his head to the left. On the nightstand, a couple of packets of aspirin sat next to a big bottle of Vitamin water. His cell phone and wallet were placed adjacent to the supplies on the same surface, along with his Iowa City PD ID and badge. A real bubble of panic raced through his mind, and automatically, McCoy slammed his right hand down hard on his hip, looking for his holstered off-duty weapon. Before he could register the presence of his gun, raw, searing pain tore through his forearm and hand. So intense, it pulled an involuntary cry of pain from his lips and set off white flashes in front of his eyelids.

Len rolled over onto his back and took a couple of deep, controlling breaths in through his nose. He held it, counted to three and released the air from his lungs slowly while his racing heart slowed. Jesus Christ, that hurt. McCoy shook his hand in the air, waiting for the tail-end of the tingling, stinging sensation to wear off before he laid his arm gently across his chest.

Like he was just run over by a truck, the memories flooded back to him in waves. It was almost as if he was watching a high definition slide show taking place behind his eyes. With every blink, he saw a new, vivid image. He saw car accident, the victims, the explosion, Pike's concerned face, and the family of the girl. McCoy squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his left hand over his face, gasping breathlessly. Maybe if he willed it hard enough, the images might stop tormenting him. At the same time, the physical pain of the burns on his hand and arm were reminders of what he couldn't do the night previous.

He must have planned his night after he left the station. After driving for an aimless hour, Len vaguely recalled leaving his off-duty weapon secured in the lockbox he kept in his car. He found a random, out-of-the-way, backwater bar and headed in with every intention of drinking himself stupid until he forgot his own name. And given the drumline playing at a mezzo forte in his head, the sensitivity to light and the fact he felt like he could puke at any second given the proper opportunity, it appeared he succeeded in his goal.

McCoy's relief knowing he hadn't lost his off duty weapon was fleeting. Though one crisis was averted, he still needed to figure out just where the hell he'd woken up. He leaned over, and more cautiously this time, reached for the cell phone sitting on the nightstand. He entered his password and squinted at the clock, rocketing upright when he saw the big, white letters that read '1514'. Scrambling off the bed with a loud, "Fuck!" McCoy grabbed all the stuff off the table and started shoving things in the correct pockets. At this rate, he was going to be more than an hour late for shift, and he knew Pike was going to kill him. Desperately trying to ignore the screaming pain coursing through his skull and the rolling of his stomach, Len was just searching for his jacket when a small figure looming in the doorway caught his attention.

Big blue eyes shaded by lots of wavy dirty blonde bangs regarded the young patrol cop curiously. Dressed in a pair of blue jeans and a red t-shirt (all liberally stained by the grass), the boy said nothing, instead tilting his head sideways as he watched the stranger frantically tear the room apart while he looked for his belongings.

Though the kid was barely tall enough to reach the middle of his thigh, McCoy felt like he being dissected by the child's scrupulous gaze. When the tiny face twisted into a very familiar little smirk, Len sighed in realization. He knew, in that instant, _exactly_ where he was. He'd only met Chris Pike's son once, but he was savvy enough to know that while the kid inherited his mother's looks, he also was blessed with his father's facial expressions. McCoy stopped dead in his tracks, defeated, with his green cargo jacket dangling from his fingertips when the small boy yelled loud enough to wake the dead. "Moooom!" he shrieked, drawing a wince from the man in the guest room "He's awake!" The child turned, tossed McCoy a curious expression over his shoulder, and bolted at warp speed down the hallway.

So much for making a discreet exit. McCoy heard the patter of little feet rocketing down the wooden hallway into the kitchen. He registered the sound of a muffled female voice before the echoes of her footsteps were audible off the walls outside the room. For the briefest of moments, Len wondered if he could just jump out the window and deal with all of this embarrassment another time. But before he could squeeze his ass through, Lynn Pike stuck her had through the open door of the room. Smiling, she waved and said, "Hello, Len. How are you feeling?"

McCoy stepped backwards until he felt the back of his legs hit the edge of the mattress as the adrenaline rush faded and his will to remain upright dissipated. He sat down hard, setting off a small tsunami with the blankets. He dropped his weary head into his hands and mumbled, "Like shit, pardon my language. How are you today, Mrs. Pike?"

"We've been over this before, my dear. It's Lynn," she said with an amused smile.

"What?" he mumbled from behind his hands, tossing in a pained groan for good measure.

"My name is Lynn. Not 'Mrs. Pike.' I'm not that old yet," she corrected.

"Mrs. Pike," he said firmly.

"Whatever." She waved one dismissive hand and scoffed, raising one eyebrow when he lifted his tired face to meet her eyes. "But since you asked, _I_ am fine. You, on the other hand, look like death warmed over." She pointed to the clothes she'd laid out the night previous on the back of the chair situated at the foot of the bed. "Why don't you grab a shower first, okay? When you're done, we'll talk. The bathroom is down the hall, and there should be towels and anything else you need in the cupboard next to the door."

McCoy pushed his aching body up off the bed and attempted to walk around Lynn while the petite woman blocked the doorway. "I'd love to, but I'm really late for work. Maybe if I attempt to show up, they won't fire me outright."

Lynn rolled her eyes. "McCoy, your partner's out there mowing the lawn. I think it's safe to say that you don't have to work today. Besides, you're in no condition to go anyway, and I think you know it." She stepped closer and gave his chest a gentle shove, chuckling at his confused expression. She dipped her head and reached for his bandaged hand. When he offered no resistance, she lifted it carefully, inspecting the wrapped wound with all the care of a mother's touch. Lynn swallowed and forced her eyes up to meet McCoy's. "I know what happened last night, Len. Did you forget that the chief gave both of you guys the next three days off to relax?"

Closing his eyes, McCoy swallowed the lump forming in his throat. "It's all a blur after I left the station," he admitted. "But yeah, I think I remember him saying something about that now."

Reaching over for the clothes she left, Lynn plucked the two garments from the chair and pushed them into Len's chest. She took a couple of seconds to study him, head tilted sideways in much of the same way her son's was. He knew he wouldn't pass even the shoddiest of inspections, but even still, Pike's wife's gaze was more intense than Chief Barnett's. McCoy actively fought the urge to shift from foot to foot while Lynn dissected him with her eyes. He knew his cheeks were flushing and the tips of his ears about to turn a lovely shade of pink, but there was nothing he could do about the involuntary reaction his body produced. He simply had to stand and bear it, and hope that she didn't want his entire life story as payment for the previous night.

Mercifully, Lynn seemed to sense the young man's growing unease. She softened the disapproving stare on her face, and muted a long, frustrated sigh. She grabbed Len gently by the bicep, spun him around and aimed her husband's rookie in the right direction. With a little, fluttering motion with her right hand, she said authoritatively, "Bathroom. Shower. Shave. Coffee. Food. In that order. Now go, Officer McCoy."

A tiny but genuine smirk pulled at the right corner of Len's mouth. "Yes, ma'am," he said with a little mock salute, accepting the clothes she offered him. Turning on his heel and with as much confidence as he could muster, he walked down the hallway and clicked the door shut behind him. McCoy dumped the clothes into a pile on the floor, closed the lid on the toilet and sat down. Every part of his body just _hurt_, even worse than it did during skills training when he was literally being drilled into the furiously at his aching temples, he squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. He stomach gave another unpleasant roll, one that, deep down, McCoy knew had nothing to do with the amount of alcohol he'd apparently consumed the night before. Len forced the bile back down by breathing through it, stood from his seated position, and set about his routine.

The shower was longer than it needed to be, but the sensations of dirt, grime, smoke and sweat rolling off his tired body and down the drain felt undeniably, criminally good. But in an instant, reality set back in, and Len felt his face burning hot with regret. He stood, forehead leaning on his arm while the water dripped down his face, wishing he might be able to wash away the previous night's shame with the same ease. With a weary sigh, McCoy finally stepped out when the water started to go cold against his skin. He dried off, dressed in the borrowed clothes he was offered, and picked up the razor and shaving gel Lynn kindly left out on the counter.

It should have been a ridiculously simple task, one that didn't require a lot of conscious thought. What shaving did necessitate, however, was an even hand, and McCoy discovered that his normal unwavering steadiness was nowhere to be found. He fumbled with the plastic cap of the shaving gel, cursing when it slipped from his numb fingertips and clattered on the tile floor. Len took another deep breath, picked up the cap and snapped it back on the container. He gripped the edge of the sink so tightly he thought his knuckles might pop out of his skin before he raised his eyes to regard his reflection in the mirror.

'Appalling' would have been an apt word to describe his own pathetic visage. McCoy was not a vain person by any stretch of the imagination, but even he was taken aback by the man that stared back at him in the mirror. His eyes, normally a vibrant grey-green, were dull and haunted. Pale skin made the bruises borne of exhaustion under his eyes excruciatingly pronounced, only matched by the drawn, tired lines stretching across his face. His eyes were red rimmed and bloodshot, and despite the long and semi-refreshing shower, he still reeked of bourbon.

He knew in an instant there was no way he was going to be able to hide the tension thrumming through his body from Lynn. But, he also knew that lollygagging in the bathroom was only going to make things worse. He reached down, picked up his rumpled, soiled clothes and used towel, dug up as much of his wounded pride as he could find, straightened his shoulders, and pulled the door open.

McCoy rounded the corner of the hallway's juncture and peered into the open space that comprised the Pike living area. The kitchen was huge and immaculate; Chris said they took out a couple of walls to make the entire area open from the living room through the entryway that led out to the garage, and in that instant, McCoy felt like the cavernous space was about to swallow him whole. Only a railing divided the actual kitchen area from the living room, and it was a barrier that Len was willing to cling to with all his might.

Lynn was curled up on the couch, a notebook balanced on her lap with colored pencils strewn in all directions. She scribbled away at the page, coloring, shading and adjusting her drawing. Len padded silently into the room and leaned on the railing, content to watch her work away as she designed her latest pastry masterpiece. He opened his mouth to say something, but his brain wasn't quite able to formulate something that didn't sound incredibly uneducated. Instead, he stood, rooted in place while he fidgeted nervously.

"I can hear you thinking while you stand there. Despite what my husband has probably told you, I don't bite," she said without looking up. Lynn dumped the art supplies back in the plastic holder and shut the sketchbook she was working on. She raised her head when his foot hit a squeaky part of the original, sixty-five year old wood covering the living room floor, meeting his eyes with a soft smile. Almost instantly, her face turned to a scowl when her sharp eyes caught the open, raw burns that encompassed a good portion of his right arm, and the way he held the affected limb protectively close to his body.

"I-ah," he struggled out as she lifted herself off the couch with the fluidity and grace of a ballet dancer. She walking towards him, and instinctively, McCoy leaned backwards, unsure. As a quick and dirty deflection, Len held up his soiled laundry and still-damp towel with a little shrug. He protested for the briefest of moments when Lynn pulled them from his hands and dropped them in her washing machine, pursing her lips as she went about her task. They made their way back into the main living area of the home. "I'm interrupting you work," he said uncomfortably, motioning with one hand toward the neat pile of art supplies she made.

"You're doing nothing of the sort. I was just working on some new designs for the shop. It's not anything that can't wait an extra day or two. Have a seat, and I'll get you some coffee," she said sweetly, moving toward the gigantic coffee pot on the kitchen counter.

He waved her off. "That's okay, Lynn. I think I've imposed enough on you in the last twelve hours to count enough for the next twelve years. I don't want to be in your way any more than I already have. But," he started, picking away at a scab on his left hand, "Thank you for what you did. You didn't have to and I'm sure you didn't really want to, but I appreciate it all the same."

"I know you do and you're welcome, but don't you dare think that lovely southern charm is going to get you out of this conversation, Mr. McCoy," Lynn replied. Shifting in place, she added, "Now, you let me take a look at that arm of yours. If you still want to bolt for the door when I'm done, then you're free to go, even if we both know you're not fine."

McCoy recoiled backwards, apprehension pulling at his already drawn face. The way she looked at him made him want to crawl into a dark hole, close his eyes, and hope that the threat passed before it turned its attention to him. Lynn, when in full mother-hen mode, was something far more frightening than even the hardest of criminals. She possessed the uncanny ability to transform from sweet and unassuming a woman to a person more akin to a seasoned drill instructor in less time than it took him to blink. The transition gave him whiplash, and it was starting to hurt. "Lynn, I-" he said, starting to make a move for the doorway.

"The care of your injury is not open for debate. Anything else we might be able to _not_ talk about, but you're not leaving my house until that's taken care of," she said sternly, glancing down towards the angry, weeping, red and white splotching peppered across McCoy's right hand and arm. Involuntarily, she hissed. Softer, she added, "That has to be just throbbing, and I know you can't fix yourself up with one hand. Would you just let me help you? Please?"

McCoy's shoulders slumped in resignation and he trudged wearily over to the table. All but collapsing in the chair, he gently laid his arm on the clean, dry towel Lynn obviously set out for him while he was showering. His eyes followed her every movement, surprised when she opened the pantry door and pulled out a basket of medical supplies. When she turned on the water to wash her hands, McCoy raised an eyebrow and smirked, tossing out an attempt at levity. "I don't know if I should trust a woman to bake cakes when she keeps medical supplies handy in her kitchen."

"Are you getting your comedic timing from my husband now? Because his sucks," she said with a matching wry grin, plopping the basket down next to him. She dug out some non-stick medical pads, a huge tube of Neosporin, some old-fashioned gauze and a roll of medical tape, and laid her supplies out on the table. Reaching out, she cautiously flipped his right arm over so it was palm up. Lynn waited for McCoy's approving nod before she silently grabbed some gauze and began gently dabbing at the blistering sores on his arm.

Len bit his lip. Even with Lynn's gentle touch, it still hurt like hell to have any kind of pressure applied to such raw, enflamed skin. Wincing, he hissed when she rubbed a particularly tender area over the juncture of his ulna and carpals of his hand. He fought the urge to pull his arm away, suppressing the need just barely. Strangely, it hadn't hurt this much last night when the EMTs were dressing the wounds, and he didn't feel any type of pain at all after he arrived at the Stumble. The latter, however, was not surprising.

It was sobering, but the pin pricks of pain were also tangible proof that it hadn't been a bad dream. McCoy closed his eyes and tried to think of something - anything else to help occupy his mind. He never was nor would he ever be a glass half full type of optimist, but if there were an up side, the stabbing sensations running up and down the length of his arm did help to keep his mind off other matters.

Like his total and complete failure as a police officer.

McCoy shook his head, resting his cheek against the fisted fingers of his left hand while she worked. As much as he hated to admit, it would have been impossible for him to bandage himself up on his own. He simply wished Lynn would go just a little bit faster so he could get the hell out of her house and home to his nice, cozy apartment. Len felt the rising surge of panic starting to form in his chest as the self-doubt started to creep back to the forefront of his mind. He physically forced it away, vowing to hold it together for just a few more minutes.

Lynn slathered McCoy's arm in a thick layer of Neosporin and laid some fresh, square non-stick bandages across the weepier sections of exposed skin. She wrapped the entire appendage carefully with the gauze, cocooning his hand and forearm awash in a sea of white. Cutting a piece of tape, she fastened her handiwork closed and stuffed all her supplies back in the plastic holding bin. "All set, Len."

McCoy pushed back from the table with a growing sense of trepidation. Lynn, the outspoken, opinionated mother hen hadn't said a word to him through the entire process, and it was making him suspicious. He narrowed his eyes, looking toward the door. He took two steps toward the threshold of the mudroom and said, "I'll, uh, come back for my clothes later. Or you can send them with Chris."

"Mmm," Lynn replied, not looking up. She got up from her chair and made a beeline straight for the coffee pot. Pulling an extra mug down from the cupboard, she topped off her own and filled the extra, making her way back to the table. Lynn grabbed a coaster and set both mugs down, parking herself at the table. She took a deep, satisfying sip and said simply, "I promised you coffee, if you still want some."

The steaming, black, potent brew beckoned him from the table. The Kona blend Lynn preferred was heavenly, and for a moment, he seriously contemplated accepting her offer. But instinctually, he knew it would be smarter for him to just leave, even if the manners literally drilled into his brain by his mother were screaming at him otherwise. Len ducked his head and slipped his feet into the shoes Chris laid out on the mat the night previous. "I'm good. Raincheck?" he asked with forced cheer.

Lynn silently nodded and took another sip, eyeing her husband's rookie from the corner of her eye and he sidled towards the door. As McCoy laid his hand on the doorknob, she said, "You not supposed to be blaming yourself, you know."

"Fuck," he muttered. He expected her to say something, but the childish part of his battered psyche hoped that maybe, for once, Lynn would just let it go and allow him to leave with at least a shred of dignity intact. Len closed his eyes and dropped his head. Fate, apparently, was really not into being kind to him.

But by this point of his life, should he really have expected anything different?

No, probably not.

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><p><strong>Next Up<strong>: McCoy decides that an entire day locked in an interrogation room with all of Iowa City's IA officers while being grilled for something he didn't do would be more pleasurable than an hour of Lynn Pike's poking, prodding and heartfelt questions. Seriously.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note**: Let me just say this loudly: I am not an angst writer. Period. My specialties are crack and procedural fics. This chapter was really, really, really hard for me to write and correctly frame, which is why it took me so long between posts of chapter two and three. I was too busy working out the details and bugs on this part. But with the hand-holding, honesty-when-it-sucked and general cheerleading from my beta, Wicked Jade, I'm quite pleased with how this turned out.

Chapters four and five were supposed to be one, but it got too long to do in one go. Hopefully you all aren't too upset that I made you wait for this part.

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><p><strong>Chapter 5<strong>

The concept of 'fight or flight' was a funny thing. By that definition, McCoy was a walking, talking contradiction of terms, breaking the norm in every single way possible. Officer McCoy, the streetwise, tough-talking, no-bullshit cop was the one who wasn't afraid to get up into anyone's shit if necessary. He was the confident one who wouldn't back down from a confrontation if challenged. On the polar opposite hand, there was the off-duty Len, the jaded, guarded and surprisingly shy young man who was best described as 'emotionally stunted.'

McCoy thought he did well to get through the care of his injured arm without more than a couple of sentences to his partner's wife. The lesser than normal volume of words coming from his mouth mitigated the potential for inadvertent utterances, and for once, he was happy to keep his yap shut. Conversely, Lynn was atypically quiet throughout the whole process, and Len should have realized that silence equated to the calm before the storm. But he didn't, and apparently, all it took to stir the pot was one well-placed, expertly timed sentence. As he silently seethed in the Pike family kitchen, McCoy couldn't help but note that he wasn't quite sure what cut harder: Lynn's abject patronization, or the pitying tone he thought he heard seeping from her voice.

Either way, it was pissing him off, but how he responded boiled down to which iteration of Leonard McCoy he wanted to be today.

He knew his personal and professional instincts were at war with one another while they tried to balance logic with emotions. At the same time, McCoy's brain was screaming while it tried to work out exactly how the blame for the Murphy's Law of fuck ups shouldn't be falling squarely on his shoulders. He'd been told - no, _pacified_ - by other officers and his supervisors, claiming that there was nothing he could have done, and that it wasn't his fault. McCoy thought those notions were nothing short of asinine. It was his job to help, and Len didn't feel like he gave it a very good go.

It was all simply overwhelming, all the feelings and beliefs swirling in his head at once felt akin to being hit by a very large, very well built defensive lineman. McCoy turned, leaned his back and shoulders against the door and ran his uninjured hand through his hair. Forcing his voice to a neutral, passive tone, he answered, "You weren't there. No offense Lynn, but you don't know that."

"Oh, that is such crap!" she exclaimed in reply, setting her coffee down on the table. The loud 'clink' of porcelain meeting wood reverberated off the walls of the kitchen, and for the briefest time, it was the only sound present in the room. Softening her challenging tone, Lynn clarified, "My husband tried to tell me the same thing last night, but he was doing it because he was busy being a horrible chauvinist. You're trying to deflect attention. There's a difference. But either way, I call bullshit."

He could feel his defenses come up, and with it, the tendrils of awkwardness. Through the haze of uncertainty running through his mind, Len was painfully aware that with one simple sentence, Lynn dumped him into the proverbial deep end of the pool before he'd been taught to swim. Somewhere near his diaphragm, McCoy's stomach began to coil itself up in a very neat and very complex sailor's knot. He stared down at the door handle, his ticket to freedom, with shared senses of longing and foreboding as the clock ticked loudly in his ears. Steeling his face, McCoy lifted his eyes to meet Lynn's surprisingly flat expression. "I don't want your pity," he ground out tightly.

She arched a thin, dark, perfectly manicured eyebrow at him. "Do you really think that's what this is about? Pity? Come on Len. I know you're a skeptical guy, but even you should be able to figure out that's not how I am."

McCoy let his head fall against the door, the base of his skull meeting the metal of the door with a dull 'thunk'. It pulled an involuntary groan from his lips when pain flashed through his aching head. His eyelids slid shut as he contemplated his next move. There were two clear options. He could stay and allow himself to be baited into a conversation he had positively no interest in carrying out. Or, he could simply leave, walk down the street and call a cab while he pretended nothing ever happened. But he knew he would be kissing Lynn's respect goodbye in the process, and as much as he tried to pretend he didn't care, her opinion of him _mattered_, dammit.

Appealing his choices was not, but when it came down to it, the answer was easier than it ought to have been. He sucked in a watery breath and opened his eyes. Len pushed himself off the door and ambled back over to the table. Wordlessly, he sat back down in the chair he previously occupied and simply glared at the woman opposite his position. Searching her expression for condescension, he asked flatly, "Why are you doing this?"

"Why not?" she countered incredulously while holding his gaze steadily. "I told you – you seem like you need an ear, and I'm willing to listen."

"No, you know what I mean. Why are you doing this?" he ground out, suspicious. "Why the hell do you care?" McCoy asked sharply, purposely cutting himself off before he could add the dangling 'about me' to the end of the sentence.

Shocked, Lynn retorted, "Why the hell do I-" She snapped her own mouth closed before her vociferous opinions ran away with her brain. She let out a squeak of disapproval and dropped her face into her hands. Rubbing at her eyes, she looked up and continued with, "You know, I've repeatedly said to people that I hope my son grows up to be a lot like you. You're kind and respectful, which is what I want for Ethan. I think this world needs more people who care – and you do, despite the fact you try to act like an asshole every day of your life to cover that little fact up. But what I don't want my son doing is undervaluing himself to the point that it's ridiculous, much like you're doing right now."

Wait, what? McCoy's jaw hung open, hinges squeaking in the proverbial wind. He rewound and replayed Lynn's miniature tirade in his head, still wondering if he actually heard her correctly. His ears were obviously not operating at full capacity, because Len swore she said that she wanted Ethan to be like him. In McCoy's mind, that was the very last thing he would wish on another human, and it was incomprehensible for him to think that anyone would actively want his personality. He shook his head, bringing a set of unsteady fingers up to press against the side of his head. "You – what did you say, Lynn?"

Calmer, she replied, "I said I want my son to be like you when he grows up. I can only hope he's as caring and responsible as you are, but I want him to realize that he _is_ worth the time and the effort of others. That's something you don't do." Lynn gathered his large, non-injured left hand up in her two smaller ones. She tilted her head to the side and smiled softly. Giving the appendage a gentle squeeze, she looked him in the eye and said with conviction, "You are a good man, Leonard McCoy. And I think you forget that sometimes."

Shaking his head, McCoy muttered something dark under his breath.

Sharp ears picked up what he hadn't meant to be heard. "What was that? I didn't catch what you said."

Bristling, he replied, "I said, 'I don't forget shit.' I'm not what you think I am, Lynn." McCoy simply stared at her while he challenged her with his eyes. In a low growl, he ground out, "You know nothing about me. And if you did, you sure as hell wouldn't be saying that."

"You're right. I don't know that much about you. In fact, I really don't know anything at all. But, do you want to know why that is? You," she emphasized, pointing one perfectly manicured bright pink nail at his chest, "Won't tell me. So, why don't you enlighten me, and then maybe I'll be able to make a more informed decision."

"Fine. You want to know why I don't deserve any of your attention? Why I don't want it? It's because I fucked up. I didn't do my job," he said, pinching the bridge of his nose and dropping his elbow on the table hard. He took a couple of long, deep breaths through his nose and wiped at his tired face.

Lynn sat back and crossed her arms over her chest. Pursing her lips in disapproval she replied flatly, "Oh, really now. How do you figure that?"

"Christ almighty," he mumbled. McCoy nearly slapped the palms of his hands down on the table, remembering about his scorched hand only at the very last moment. Instead, he laid his arms gently on the surface and started picking at the tape on the gauze while he silently seethed. Did he really have to spell it out for her in neat block letters? Exasperated, he clarified, "You're married to my partner. Isn't that explanation enough?"

"I heard about it from Chris, yes. And I saw it on the news," she responded. She softened her tone to a more conversationally appropriate level. "Both were awful, but I'm still waiting to hear how that equates to you screwing up."

McCoy twitched at the table, breath coming out in short, hard gasps. He was losing his tenuous control of the conversation, and he didn't particularly like the feeling at all. Like a runaway wrecking ball, it was barreling ahead with no regard as to what it hit, and he was powerless to stop it. He stayed silent, moving only to work his clenched jaw back and forth.

Lynn tilted her head to the side. Her tone was soft and easy, almost like she was trying to coax him forward. "You don't know, do you?"

He knew, but voicing the reason was an entirely different matter, and one he wasn't sure he could do. Len opened his mouth to say something, but every response died on his lips. He let his steely, hostile gaze flick everywhere around the room, dusting over each fixture. Not willing to meet her questioning stare, the only place it didn't land was on Lynn's face. McCoy's nostrils flared out like an angry bull even as uncharacteristic apprehension passed through his eyes. It was almost as if his normally impeccable gift for snarky linguistics completely abandoned him, leaving behind a man who could barely arrange his scattered thoughts into one proper sentence.

Thankfully beating him to the punch, Lynn supplied helpfully, "I'm not a mind reader and I don't know you all that well, but I think this is about more than last night. What I don't know is why."

McCoy chuckled soullessly. He was damned sure that Ethan was going to be a very observant and smart young man, given just the parentage from which he came. He wondered if everyone with the last name of Pike could read other people so easily. It was a convenient gift, one that he wished he'd gotten himself. Lynn barely uttered enough words to form a full paragraph, and already she pushed him against the ropes and on back on his heels. "That's not fair," he finally answered.

"What?" she snorted back in his direction. "That I'm not fooled by the bravado and the snark? Like I said, I don't know you that well, but I know people like you. It's a defense mechanism, and I'm sorry to report it doesn't work with me."

He couldn't remember the last time someone pushed back when he raised his shields. Most (if not all) people in Iowa City took his gruff, somewhat irritated and temperamental nature at face value, never bothering to look any deeper than that. Normally, that's what McCoy preferred. But, there were some moments when he felt it might be nice to have someone in his life that was just there – a person with no ulterior motives and who wanted nothing from him in return.

But was Lynn that person? He was still subconsciously suspicious, but the more he actively thought about it, the more it made sense. Maybe it was the hangover, or maybe he really was that desperately hopeful, but he actually felt like he might be able to trust her. McCoy felt the walls he so successfully erected to hide behind crumbling away with each passing moment. His resolve to keep his lips zipped up tightly was melting like an ice cube in the middle of a desert and he knew there was no way he could keep up the stoic, unaffected charade any longer.

It was obvious Lynn recognized the sudden change in his demeanor. A little smile broke out across her face and she shifted in her chair. Folding her hands in front of her, she said, "Should we try this again? What happened last night?"

McCoy's posture sank, his snarky defensiveness running up the white flag of defeat. He stared down at the table, gently tracing a deep gouge in the dark wood's surface. If it were any other time, he might be amused while he wondered how it got there. Instead, he lifted his coffee mug to his lips and took a sip, stalling for every bit of time he could scrape up. "I don't want to bore you with the details. You said you heard it from Chris earlier," he replied, still staring off into space.

"You're not going to bore me, even if I've already gotten the abridged version from my husband. But," she started, "I got it from his point of view. I want to hear know what's happening with you."

"I wish I knew, too. Might be able to tell you then," he sighed out honestly. The admission took him by surprise; he hadn't expected it to be so natural to admit his confusion. He used his left thumb to crack his knuckles on his hand. "This is how I spend most of my day, you know," he said flatly.

Lynn's brows furrowed. "What, angry? Confused?"

"No," he answered. "Worried."

"About what, Len?" she asked, settling into her seat. Lynn dumped her flip-flops on the floor and pulled her right leg up. She tucked her right ankle under her left knee and tapped away at the support of the chair with her left foot as it swung rhythmically back and forth.

McCoy leaned back in his chair and chewed nervously on his lower lip. He hated himself for what he was about to say because it was selfish and callous and just egregiously wrong, but it was the truth. Swallowing hard, he replied, "That my mistake is going to cost someone their life."

Allowing McCoy a couple of moments to compose himself, Lynn asked after a couple of long seconds, "Is that what you felt like yesterday?"

He nodded silently. "It was more than 'felt', Lynn. Last night, that was a high school girl, and nearly your husband."

Lynn tipped her chair back and reached behind her head towards the surface of the breakfast bar. With her fingertips, she snagged the package of lemon poppy seed scones she made fresh earlier in the day. Plopping the bounty on the table, she cracked the lid, grabbed one and dunked it into her coffee. Offering the container to McCoy, she said, "I find that ridiculously hard to believe, but go ahead and try me."

McCoy grabbed a scone and nibbled the end, working the small pastry into his system as a trial run. He wasn't hungry at all, but he knew he should probably attempt to eat something. The nauseous feeling buried deep in the pit of his stomach, the one that stayed fairly dormant so far on his recovery day, gave a little lurch. He averted his eyes, staring hollowly at the small chip on the lip of the coffee mug while he thought just how to phrase his next few sentences. "I almost didn't see her," he started.

"The girl from last night?"

He nodded. "I was going to walk away and leave her there. Chris pulled the driver out and was doing what he could to help, and it was my job to check the car to make sure it was clear. I thought it was – I really did. It was so scrunched up from skidding into that tree that I thought there couldn't be anyone else in that small of a space."

"What made you go turn around?" she asked, gently prodding him to continue.

"I was on my way back over toward Chris when I realized I saw two purses in the car. I knew then that there had to be someone else. I had to climb up on what was left of the trunk of the car to see her. The tree the car hit shoved the passenger side pretty much into the driver's side, and she was wedged down below the seats and under the door. All I could see was her face and part of her left shoulder."

Lynn lifted her mug and took a drink, swallowing down the lump that formed in her throat. "And you tried to get to her," she stated rhetorically.

"I tried. Obviously, I wasn't successful," McCoy replied with an angry snort. "The only thing left intact on the car was the damned back window. Everything else was shattered and twisted. It was the only thing keeping me from reaching her, because through that area was the only clean way into the car. I couldn't break it and I couldn't kick it in, because it would have landed right on top of her."

"Sounds like a case of 'damned if you do, and damned if you don't'," Lynn said to him. She picked up her empty coffee mug and snagged Len's as well. She walked over the giant coffee maker and refilled his, filling hers with water on the way past the sink. "I don't want to be up all night," she said with a wry smirk.

Len returned the expression, though it certainly didn't reach his eyes and was devoid of the warmth normally associated with a rare but genuine McCoy smile. He sighed, shifted and winced when he bumped his arm on the edge of the table. Staring through the open glass of the patio door, Len looked out at the perfectly clear and blue sky, and the lusciousness of the rich green of Pike's prized lawn. To his overwrought brain, it was almost like he was seeing in sepia, the dour colors of his perceived vision matching his mood. "I could have gotten to her out if I'd seen her sooner, or if I was able to get the rear passenger door free."

Lynn's mouth formed a little 'O' of both surprise and frustration while her brain processed what he said. "Len, you're human. You don't have infrared vision, and your certainly aren't Superman. You can't expect yourself to be perfect every single day of your life."

He shook his head adamantly. "That's not an excuse I'm willing to accept. When I was back in Georgia, I pulled people out of wrecks like that one, and ones that were worse. There was no reason why I shouldn't have been able to get to her."

She narrowed her eyes, tilted her chin down and brought her hand up to rest on her chin. Her expression sparkled while she put two and two together, and it was starting to make McCoy nervous. "You just hit on part of it, you know."

"What part?"

Leaning in, Lynn simply smiled. "The difference maker. You said, 'When I was back in Georgia'."

"What the hell does that have to do with this?" he asked. The blood was rushing through his body again, and the 'whoosing' hum roaring through his ears was drowned out only by the ragged sounds of his breath.

"Everything! It has everything to do with the reason you're needlessly beating yourself up," she half-exclaimed with a measure of incredulity, leaning forward in her chair. Lynn folded her hands neatly in front of her and looked McCoy in the eye. "Professionally speaking, what are you? Don't think. Just answer the question," she said when he opened his mouth to protest.

McCoy scowled in disapproval but played along obediently. "I'm a cop."

"Exactly," Lynn said succinctly. "You're a cop now. You _were_ a paramedic. You can't be both, and you can't expect yourself to react like both in every single situation. It's ridiculous to think that you could. Look, do me a favor for a second, okay? Just humor me. I want you to think like a medic for a minute. Do you think that girl was alive?"

McCoy sat back and stretched out his long legs. He let his hands rest lightly on his chest while he contemplated the question. He forced himself to analyze the obvious high rate of speed, the slightly damp road, the lack of restraints and the total destruction of the car relative to what such trauma would do to a human body. "I don't know. Maybe. It was probably a long shot," he answered honestly after a beat.

Nodding her head, Lynn continued with, "And did you do everything you could to get her out with the equipment available to you at the time?"

"I should have done more," he replied quickly and nearly automatically. On the surface, his response was flat, but along with it, undertones ripe with rage leaked through his voice and eyes.

"Really? I can't believe that for one moment. Because to me, it sounds like you did everything you physically could have and then some," she said, motioning down towards his arm. "I'm going to tell you again – don't think. Just answer my question. It doesn't even have to be out loud. With what supplies you had at your disposal, what more could you have done?"

He fell silent as a stream of logical responses to the previous night's emergency paraded through his head. He sorted through police protocols, safety checklists and the requisite Hail Mary plays he picked up over the course of his short but dual civil service careers. Each one he dreamed up was discounted just as quickly. Finally, he replied, "If I did everything I could, then why does it still feel like I should have thought of something else?"

"Because you care," Lynn answered, smiling. She propped her chin up on her fisted hand and continued with, "You're upset because you _think_ there was another option. But I saw the news report and heard it first hand from Chris. If you'd done any more, you might be dead, too."

McCoy had to concede her point. As it was, the car's flashover was intense and painful, and he was outside the car. While he started to accept he_ might_ have done everything possible for the victim still in the car, he still was at odds with himself over what he did to his partner. And, he felt like he owed it to Lynn to at least apologize or offer some kind of lame explanation. "I put your husband in danger because I was too stubborn to back away."

This time, Lynn did purse her lips. Her expression clearly read 'annoyed' in big, loud letters, but he wasn't exactly sure it was directed at him. "Len, how old was she?"

"Fifteen."

She dipped her chin while she pushed her glasses up on her nose."Do you really think, if your roles were reversed, that you wouldn't have been dragging Chris backwards from doing the same thing?"

He never thought about it that way. McCoy was so busy playing the 'what if' game in his own head that he never really gave much thought to how his partner was affected by their last shift. Pike was the proverbial badass and the complete package, the one that was cool under pressure no matter what the situation. He could talk to anyone, and figure out what needed to be done, all without putting forth much visible effort. He was unflappable, the guy who always knew how to diffuse a tough situation or what to say after a rough night. It made Len feel like he had to bury his emotions to measure up, and sometimes, that choice got him in trouble.

Like last night.

"It was telling her parents that got me," he admitted after a long, pregnant pause while he spun the mug in a slow circle on the table.

Lynn swallowed hard. Her expression faltered sympathetically while her eyes flicked toward Ethan's room down the hall before she refocused on the young man sitting in front of her. "I don't doubt it. That has got to be the worst thing you could possibly do."

"It was, and I know I couldn't have done it alone." In a near mumble, he admitted about his partner and training officer, "In this job, I don't know how he does it. He told that family their daughter had just been killed in a car accident like he was reading an article from the Sunday paper."

Lynn shook her head. "Like I said, don't think he was unaffected by it, Len. He was. Believe me. He just doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve like you do. That's the only difference."

"He's got me fooled then. I could feel their eyes on me as Chris talked. He told them the story, and it was like I was reliving it again while he went over each point. I couldn't even look at her parents when we were finally done. The sounds, the smells, the images – they're all stuck permanently in my mind, and all I wanted to do when I walked out that door was forget them," McCoy said, rocking his head back and forth to crack his neck. "Damn selfish, isn't it?"

"Did you succeed?" she asked with narrowed, suspicious eyes.

McCoy's shoulders slumped and his posture drooped. His eyes sank back down to the kitchen table while he started to fiddle with a hangnail on one of his fingers. "No," he admitted. "But I gave it a pretty good go."

"Yes, I know. I actually remember how you got here last night," Lynn replied with a raised eyebrow.

McCoy felt his face coloring red again, the tips of his ears burning bright pink in embarrassment. "Thanks for that, for what you did for me. I meant it when I said that earlier."

She simply waved a dismissive hand in McCoy's general direction. "You're always welcome here, but my hope is that we don't repeat this particular process over again in the near future. What happened last night after you boys were done with shift was not good for anyone here, especially you."

McCoy's head snapped up, eyes blazing suddenly bright. The abrupt flare of passion flowing through his expression accentuated the pale, lifeless tone of his skin by stark contrast. Coupled with the way the light grabbed his face in profile, the combination set up a nearly macabre visage. "What is that supposed to mean?" he answered sharply, clearly ill at ease with the underlying meaning of her sentence.

"I mean," she started carefully, "That as a cop's wife, I've seen a lot of people come and go in your profession. You're not the first guy he's trained, but I know he does hope that you're his last. He can go out with a bang, you know? He thinks you have what it takes to be a good cop, and from what I've seen, he's right."

"What, he's not planning on retiring any time soon, is he?" McCoy shot out, genuinely concerned that he could lose his training partner and respected mentor.

Lynn laughed. "God, no. Our son is only five. He's got a ways to go before he can hang it up for good. Chris, as I'm sure you've heard, has always been a training officer. He's got the eye for it, and he's turned several young, green rookies into good cops. But teaching you FNGs and keeping you out of trouble is hard work, and it's stressful. Whether he likes it or not, he's getting older and I know he's been looking for some stability in his work partnership for the last couple of years."

As flattered and shocked as he was by Lynn's surprise revelation, McCoy was equally suspicious. "What's the 'but' I hear coming?"

"I knew there was a reason he liked you. You're a perceptive little shit," she said with a laugh. Sobering, Lynn clarified, "I know you doubt yourself right now even though nothing about last night was your fault."

His face fell, and McCoy immediately began stammering out some contradictory statement.

"Len, just stop and listen to me, okay?" Lynn interjected for what seemed like the fifth time that afternoon. "It's natural for you to think what you do. It hurts, even if it's not the truth. But I just don't want to see you get to the point where your self-doubt might actually be right. You have to learn to live with it if you're going to stay with this job. Find ways to vent healthily. Getting yourself so drunk that you can't even walk is not one of those ways."

McCoy cringed, the fog of the night previous weighing down his pride like a lead balloon. He only hoped he didn't say anything too embarrassing, since he figured he reached his quota of stupid in Lynn's presence for the next year all in one night. "I know. I just didn't know what else to do. Old habits die hard, I guess," he said with a self-deprecating sad smile. "It's what I do."

Lynn stood, snagging McCoy's empty coffee mug and her own before she walked them back over to the kitchen. Dumping them both in the sink, she said, "Well, find a new way to be upset."

"No promises," he stated matter of factly. Though his facial expression sported a look of annoyance, his eyes told another story entirely. They were almost thankful. With a bit of genuine warmth that wasn't there a short hour earlier, he added, "But I'll work on that."

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><p><strong>Next Up<strong>: Pike has a bit of an epiphany.


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's Notes**: First of all, thank you guys for sticking with this story. As I said in my last AN, I'm really a crack writer who pretends that she can write angst. (And that will be evidenced when I start posting the next two stories in the 'verse to prove that yes, I can write these characters better than I did here.) That said, it doesn't mean I'm displeased with the way this story turned out. I still like it and I'm proud of it. It's been a learning experience for me – this whole piece, and I think in the end, it'll make me a better writer. In any case, thank you for reading, and I hope you've enjoyed it.

**Disclaimer**: I don't own it, nor do I make any profit. Lawsuits would ruin what has turned out to be a pretty awesome summer.

**Chapter 6**

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><p>Chris Pike was ready to admit that he was ridiculously thickheaded.<p>

It wasn't his afternoon's goal to delve into the deep, dark recesses of his partner's mind, but a few well-placed questions from Lynn saw any hope of neutrality flushed straight down the drain. Chris was on his way upstairs from the basement walkout to grab some food from the kitchen when a conversation between Lynn and McCoy, one obviously not meant for his ears, caught his attention. It was one of those heartfelt and wrenchingly uncomfortable deals, one that made Chris' own skin crawl in sympathy. The woman sitting opposite his partner at the table was an expert interrogator; she knew like no one else how to draw out even the most introverted of personalities and how to chip away at the root of the issue without appearing like she was pushing the boundaries of propriety. He sighed. If there were anyone up to the task of questioning one Leonard McCoy, it was his stubborn wife.

Pike stopped short, silently flattened himself against the wall of the staircase of the basement, sank down on the stairs, and settled in to listen. The door leading from the kitchen to the basement was cracked just slightly to allow Joker, the Pike family cat, free access to the basement and her litter box. From his vantage point, Pike could see McCoy slumped pitifully at the table, his back to the basement door. His shoulders were hunched inwardly and from the visible reflection of the patio door, the young man's eyebrows remained tightly knit together in the middle in rapt concentration. His face was pinched and his eyes shaded, and Pike doubted McCoy would have noticed him even if the young man was facing the right direction. Lynn's body was aimed toward her husband's position, though if she saw him, she gave no outward indication.

Chris sat, completely still, and silently eavesdropped on the exchange. It made him feel guilty, invading McCoy's privacy, but there was another part of him that knew it was necessary. Chris-the-everyday-guy knew Len was a mess, both figuratively and literally. Conversely, Pike-the-badass-sergeant didn't think it was his job to fix it. But as he sat and listened, he just knew that _something _had to change. Hearing McCoy speak, Chris' own stomach clenched and twisted painfully on more than one occasion while he waited for the young man's response to Lynn's questions. He found himself leaning forward in anticipation, the hair on his body standing on end, as he categorized his partner's thought processes. And, Pike finally realized how it felt to be completely helpless when he took in the resigned, defeated tone of McCoy's weary voice.

If there were ever a time that he wanted to kick his own ass, it was right now, and Chris knew it would be well deserved.

A flash of black t-shirt and shorts caught his attention when McCoy shifted his long frame in the kitchen chair. Pike half-heard what Lynn said and his brain did register Len's cautiously optimistic response of, "But I'll work on it." His relief that perhaps they'd reached a turning point was short lived; Pike barely had time to better conceal himself when McCoy unexpectedly jumped up from the table, heading for the bathroom. Whatever else was said between the two Chris missed out hearing, and having reached his quota of heavy conversation for the day, he wasn't at all displeased. Seeking escape, Pike pushed himself off the stairs and made his way down to the den tucked in the back corner of the basement.

Chris pushed the door open and was immediately comforted by the warm, humid air. It reminded him almost of a humidor, but without the matching scent of cigars. Instead, it smelled of a sweetly unique combination of sawdust, roasted wood and thinly spun metal. The room itself wasn't small; in fact, it was probably used at one point as secondary master bedroom, but it was strangely intimate despite its large size.

The room was doubly long as it was wide, and its rectangular shape allowed Pike to essentially create two rooms in one space. The door from the hallway was situated in the middle of the short wall. At the end of the room opposite the side with the door sat a large plush leather couch and loveseat. They were arranged in an 'L' shape, surrounding a TV that was propped up against one of the long walls. Under the black wooden coffee table, the red and gold Oriental rug felt soft and pleasantly squishy beneath his toes. The warm hues matched the general tone of the room, with the dark mahogany flooring and deep golden brown walls. A mini-fridge next to the couch kept the room from feeling too un-manly, presumably stocked with beer and other snack-like goodness.

Nearer to the door, several signed posters from Chris' various favorite bands lined the space between the windows. They were placed above an L-shaped desk on which he stuck all the recording and mixing equipment. The music center was strategically placed on the other side of the room from the couch, and clearly was well used from the random bits of clutter peppering the surface. Off the edge of the desk, Pike's cherished Taylor 814 acoustic guitar sat on its floor stand, waiting to be used. His eyes gravitated toward it, and he subconsciously licked his lips in anticipation. Dropping heavily into the black mesh office chair in front of the desk, Chris reached for the instrument and began manipulating each of the six strings to bring the fine piece of craftsmanship into tune.

Pike snagged the pick off the desktop and adjusted the shoulder strap of the instrument before he settled it comfortably into his lap. He propped his feet up on the desk, tipped his head back and closed his eyes. His fingers started moving of their own volition while he picked out a random arpeggio. His right hand manipulating the pick, he ignored the painful stretching of freshly burned and healing skin. The sensations were shooting up his right arm while he played, but despite the discomfort, Chris could feel the tension draining from his body as all the worries of the day about McCoy and his insecurities melted in time with the beat of the music.

He was so lost in what he was doing that he never even heard Lynn walk down the stairs, and he certainly didn't notice her standing in the doorway. The sharp tap-tap-tap of her knuckles against the doorframe startled him, enough to nearly make him jump. The pick scraped gracelessly against the strings of his guitar, and Chris cringed at the dissonantly muted sound it produced.

"I'm going to bring Len back to the Stumble to get his car, and then I'm going to bring Ethan to his swimming lessons. Do you need anything while I'm out?" she asked with a jerk of her thumb towards the stairs. Lynn's keys jingled in her hands, purse slung over her left forearm. She cleared a piece of hair from her face while she studied her husband curiously.

Chris forced a tight smile while he composed himself, laying his forearms over the side walls of the guitar on his lap. He shook his head, trying to appear aloof even if he knew he was far from fooling his wife. "No, I'm good. Take your time."

"Mmm," she replied, raising an eyebrow. "When I get home, we'll talk, okay?"

Pike let out a frustrated sigh and set the ridiculously expensive guitar gently in the upright stand. Placing one hand the top of each thigh, he looked up at Lynn and asked despondently, "How did I not see this?"

Lynn shook her head, walking over towards Chris. She leaned her butt against the desk, bracing both hands on the edge while she crossed her right ankle over her left. She was silent for a moment before she looked him in the eye and answered, "Does it matter? You're seeing it now."

"That's the problem. I'm _just_ figuring it out now. I didn't see it when I should have." He swiveled in the chair to face his wife while he scratched his head. "Lynn, how am I supposed to teach and protect him when I couldn't even figure out there was anything wrong in the first place? I don't even know where the beginning is in all this shit," Pike admitted, exasperation and frustration rolling off his body in palpable waves.

Lynn pursed her lips. "I don't have a crystal ball to tell you exactly what you have to do, as nice as that would be. But, I think you'd be smart to start by to figuring out where you stand with Leonard. Chris, I know you know this, but he's a good kid. He's just more troubled than you think, and the only way it's going to get better is if you get involved."

"I know," Pike replied, shuddering at the mental image of the despondent young man likely still seated at his kitchen table. Forget the stress of the last twenty-four hours; at this rate, he was going to wind up with a migraine based off tension alone. Falling silent, Chris rubbed furiously at the back of his neck with both hands. Strong fingers dug into the sensitive skin and muscles around his shoulders as he tried to work out the kinks in his neck while he willed his brain to come up with a suitable solution for his partnership dilemma. Finding none, Pike gave up with a hearty growl and dropped his hands back into his lap.

Sighing, Lynn shifted her stance and let her eyes drift towards the ceiling. Pike knew that meant she was thinking, which was either a very good thing, or a very bad thing. She tilted her head towards his and, surprisingly without the expected 'I told you so' sting, said, "You know, most of your life, things have come pretty easily to you. Don't get me wrong – you've worked your ass off for what you've got, but you've been good at whatever you've done without really trying. This is your first real challenge, and it's going to be a foreign feeling to you. I guarantee you're not going to like it, but you just have to suck it up and deal."

"Thanks, honey. I appreciate that," he snorted out. A bit of disdain dripped from the end of the sentence. Even Chris, knowing Lynn's propensity for brutal honesty, didn't always appreciate such forwardness. Sometimes, a little bit of sugar coated compassion would be nice.

She seemed to sense his unease. Lynn's expression took on a much softer look when she said, "I told you I'd help, and I meant it. I'm going to be there every step of the way, even when you hate me for it. Whatever it is, we'll figure it out together." With a smirk, she added, "Now, I'm going to get going before Len starts thinking we're down here trying to give Ethan a sibling."

Despite the obvious tension, Pike couldn't help but laugh while she leaned into place a gentle goodbye kiss on his lips. Chris smelled the flowery scent of her perfume and inhaled deeply. The bright, rosy smell always relaxed him, since it reminded him uniquely of Lynn. She, along with Ethan, were the two things he thought of every day during his shift and the reasons he worked so damned hard to make sure he could come home at night. While his son might be his pride and joy, Lynn was the rock on which Chris depended. Throughout the years, she became the port tucked away from the storm and the oasis he desperately needed. She was his sounding board, his therapist, his bullshit-o-meter, and his best friend, all wrapped up into one neatly tied and unconventional little package.

He loved her, plain and simple.

Chris watched her walk out of the room while he shook his head in disbelief. He instinctually reached for the guitar again, but when he set the instrument in his lap, he paused. Pike flexed his hands open and closed. His fingers felt numb and unsteady, uncoordinated like he was still learning to play the opening riffs of _Smoke on the Water_ instead of a man who could bang out Clapton's solo from _Layla_ in his sleep. There would be no more playing tonight; at this rate, he'd probably drop his favorite Taylor and break the damned thing anyway.

Pike swiveled around in the chair and propped his feet up on the desk. He fired up the Macbook Pro sitting on the desktop and after punching in his password, opened up his iTunes playlists. Pulling the music program to the secondary monitor situated above the laptop proper, Chris double clicked on a song blindly before his fingers searched for the power button stuck around the back of the hefty, black Studiophile AV-40 speakers strategically deployed on opposite sides of his desk. The little blue light haloing the volume control blinked brightly to life, and with it, the rich, warm sounds of the Red Hot Chili Peppers floated through the room. Chris sat stock still and glared balefully at the screen when he realized that, of all things, he'd chosen _Under the Bridge_.

Pike leaned back in his chair and interlaced his fingers, setting the open palms on the back of his skull. Normally, the smooth tones, understated guitars and ballad style of the song would have calmed him, if not for the lyrics. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, suppressing a shudder as the first half of the first verse rolled through. Chris was well aware of the real meaning, but the sudden appropriateness of the words in relation to his situation with McCoy was almost eerie. For a moment he contemplated skipping to the next track, but he couldn't quite make his hand and finger move toward the 'forward' button the keyboard of his laptop.

The song's second verse made Chris contemplate (albeit briefly) how his life might have turned out differently without Lynn in it. Though they didn't always agree, they made a damned good pair. He needed that opposite, that person who saw the world in a completely different light. Lynn accused him, on the infrequent occasions they fought, of being too black and white, of being blinded by the micro in terms of interpersonal relationships. Even though she never said anything she didn't mean, he never gave her observations much credence until he walked in on McCoy's interrogation session. While Len might not have realized why Lynn was phrasing her questions so carefully, Chris knew right away that McCoy's responses were as much for the young cop's benefit as they were for his sergeant's.

McCoy was a tough read. In all actuality, he was probably the toughest read of all Pike's associations, both professional and personal. Chris was streetwise, but even he was completely fooled by the snarky, cantankerous smokescreen Len outwardly exhibited. It was embarrassing to admit that he'd been schooled by his pupil and called out by his wife. Clearly, he missed so much. Part of his perfectionistic nature didn't want to accept that he could have been so wrong while the macho side of him wasn't ready to concede that he was starting to care.

It stung that McCoy thought Pike was so unaffected by the events of the previous night. Hardly the truth, Chris managed about an hour of sleep in total for the night since the end of his shift. His insomnia had nothing to do with his unscheduled trip to the Stumble. Rather, Pike knew that if he didn't sleep, he wouldn't be subject to the nightmares that were brewing on the edge of his mind. But, Chris also realized just as quickly that he was wound so tightly not over concern for his partner, but because he was grieving in his own way with the family he informed.

The thought that he identified more with an inconsolable set of parents than with his own partner was a bit of an uncomfortable revelation. Lynn was right – McCoy, to Pike, _was_ an afterthought. As an adult, Len was supposed to be able to take care of himself, or so the theory went. Chris simply assumed that Len was just like most normal people (he'd probably want to adjust that definition going forward) who would voice his concerns if there was a legit reason. His trainee was not shy about exercising his right of free speech; Pike heard McCoy's opinion on just about every subject, whether he wanted to or not. He thought (foolishly) that Len's forward nature would carry over to the rare moments during which the young man needed something other than an assist on an arrest.

In his defense, it wasn't unreasonable for Pike to assume that McCoy had his own coping mechanisms, given his somewhat lateral career move. Additionally, he seemed to be integrating himself to the department just fine. He was getting along well with the rest of the squad room, even if there was a good bit of awkwardness and culture shock at first. But what he didn't see was that McCoy's bitching never went any further than skin deep, nor did his interactions with the rest of the department.

Even though he'd been completely wrong, the silver lining of the situation was that he was being forced to think, that the complete breakdown in communication between partners was being addressed here and now. The individual pieces of the puzzle were starting to lock into place in his head, and it made him scowl. The logical conclusion was that the blame for this whole mess, whatever _it_ was, landed squarely on his Pike's shoulders. He was the sergeant; it was his job to teach McCoy the ropes, to keep him safe, and above all, to keep him sane. Meat Loaf might have said that _Two Out of Three Ain't Bad_ but in his line of work, Pike thought that sixty-six percent success rate was nothing short of abysmal failure.

"It's starting to make sense in that skull of yours, isn't it?" Lynn's voice wafted in from the doorway.

For the second time in two hours, Chris jumped. "Christ, Lynn! Stop sneaking up on me like that!" he exclaimed, detaching his proverbial claws from the ceiling while he tried to calm his racing heart. Pike glared at Lynn while she made her way through the doorway and across the room.

Unaffected by his steely eyes, Lynn popped open the fridge and snagged a bottle of water. She twisted off the cap and grabbed a coaster, setting the sweating plastic container down on the 8-ball porcelain drink holder. "It's not my fault that you can't hear when you're off daydreaming or playing that damned guitar of yours," she said finally, stretching out on the buttery leather couch.

"You like that damned guitar of mine," Pike reminded her, motioning with his head toward the stand.

"True. I did buy it for you," Lynn said with a raise of her eyebrows. "Even if some days I wonder what the hell I was thinking when I did."

"Get Len all situated?" Pike asked, effectively changing the subject while he ignored her lighthearted insult. He reached over and turned the speakers down, noting with a marginal bit of happiness his musical selection's random option managed to choose songs that didn't cut so close to home. He was still trying to shake the general feeling of unease conjured by the music, with little to no success.

"Yeah, he should be on his way back home right now. I had to keep AJ from interrogating the poor kid anymore, so I'd be careful about that one if I were you. Harris knows an awful lot about you, and he seems to have taken a particular interest in your partner," Lynn warned with a twinkle in her eyes. "He could give Len ammunition on you to use for the rest of your life if he wanted."

Pike snorted. "AJ wouldn't dare. There's a rule against that sort of thing."

"Oh, I think he would, and I don't even think he'd give it a second thought." Lynn felt the couch dip with Pike's weight as he sat down next to her. She shifted her body enough to allow him to join her before she snuggled closer to him. Sobering, she looked up into Chris' eyes before she said, "Look, I know that you have a rule about checking your badge at the door, but I think we made a few exceptions today and last night. I need to ask you one more question."

"Just one?" he asked cheekily.

Lynn frowned. "Be serious, Chris."

"Okay, okay," he said with a resigned sigh. "What do you want to know?"

"It's just something that's bothered me since you came home last night. I don't understand why the Chief send you and Len to make that notification in the first place. You were both injured, and you already had one hell of a night."

Pike's lips pursed together, forming a grim, troubled line. He knew Lynn would eventually pick up on it and ask him the burning million dollar question, but he held out a slim glimmer of hope that he'd be able to put the conversation off for at least a couple of days. "It was McCoy's idea," he replied without really thinking through the sentence's perception first.

"Do you blame everything on your partner?" Lynn asked with no small measure of exasperation.

"When it was his idea, I most certainly do," Pike retorted. He grimaced, and then shifted, stretching out his legs on the coffee table. More calmly, he went on. "The medics were working on patching both of us up while I gave our report to the lieutenant. They were just finishing up with me when Chief Greyson walked up and told us to take the rest of the night off. McCoy, who hadn't said a word since the reinforcements arrived, asked who was telling the parents."

"I assume Greyson didn't want it to be you guys."

"No, he didn't, and for obvious reasons. He was going to send over Mariana and Chavez, which would have been a massive mistake either way," Pike said, cringing in sympathy. "As terrible as it sounds, I'm glad it was us there. Mariana has about as much compassion as Kim Jong Il and Chavez has the smarts to match the brickwork on the front of our house. It would have been a disaster, and we would have been doing damage control anyway."

"Oh. Those two. Yeah, I remember you bitching about them. They're still around?" she asked.

"Unfortunately," Chris replied. "And as soon as McCoy heard that order, he wasn't going to have anything of it. He stood up, put his uniform shirt back on and marched right over to the car. Didn't wait for me, didn't even let the medics finish their work. I had to order him to let them finish bandaging his arm up, and even after that, he would only come back if Chief allowed us to go instead," Pike said, taking a long pull from Lynn's water bottle.

"Did he say why? You kind of get that the outcome for him wasn't very good," Lynn replied. Her statement was most obviously rhetorical in nature, even if it did need to be voiced audibly.

"He didn't say, but the look on his face pretty much told me all I needed to know. For the longest time, it was just…blank. Len muttered something about how he thought that, 'It wouldn't be right' and I can only assume he meant to say that it wouldn't be right for anyone else to go. At least, that's what I hope he meant." Chris' posture sank a bit further into the soft leather couch. He reached for Lynn's hands, suddenly needing the comfort offered by tactile contact with another person. He wasn't a needy or overly touchy guy, but clearly the events of the previous night were still taking their toll.

Lynn let her husband's hand close over hers. She felt the clink of their wedding rings meeting as she let out a deep breath. "After my chat with him, and I did know you were there by the way, my guess is that he was doing what he did last night as a punishment to himself."

"That's a pretty obvious conclusion at this point, I think." Pike paused to gather his thoughts. "But, I don't entirely disagree with him. He might have gotten the reasons wrong, but he was on the right track with wanting to go over there."

"How so?" Lynn questioned, not at all catching Chris' train of thought.

"We were there, Lynn. I know there wasn't a damned thing we could have done for that poor girl, but even so, put yourself in her parents' shoes for a minute." Pike took a couple of seconds to allow his wife to compose herself as the same horror that flashed through Chris' mind earlier, the one ingrained as a parent, rocketed through hers. Subdued, he continued. "You would probably want to hear what happened from the last person who saw your child alive. You would want the firsthand account, and I think McCoy realized that, even at his own expense."

"_Especially_ at his own expense," she emphasized after she swallowed down a baseball-sized lump that jumped into her throat.

"You want to clarify that for me?"

She cracked her knuckles loudly and then dropped her hands back to her lap. "Leonard feels responsible for all this, though I haven't exactly figured out why yet," Lynn replied succinctly.

Pike's face darkened. "He takes it too personally, apparently. As an FTO, I've never seen a guy who takes it as seriously right out of the gate as McCoy did."

"All your rookies have been eager to please and learn," she pointed out quickly.

"Yeah, they've been eager to learn, but they were all blank slates. None of them had the civil service experience prior to coming to PD that McCoy did. It's part of the reason I liked him so much when I met him, and why I worked so hard to convince him not to give up on the entire idea."

"And now you're thinking his previous experience and what happened to him back in Georgia might be a hindrance," she said, filling in the blanks for him. "After seeing the state he was in last night and today, I'd be hard pressed to disagree with you on that."

A calm silence fell over the room. Pike inhaled deeply. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back into the cushions of the couch. "Don't let this go to your head, but you were completely right."

"About what?" she asked.

"About me. You were right when you told McCoy that I really like him, and that I would like to see him as my permanent partner. I love teaching, but there's only so much of that I can do before I want to pull my hair out."

Lynn chuckled lightly, slapping Chris on the arm. "And we can't have that. I need you to stay sane."

He snorted. "So does the department."

"I'm sure I could make a few phone calls and find some guys that think you went off the reservation long ago. Or, I'm sure a few more of them would think you were never on it to begin with," she said lightly.

Pike looked down into Lynn's shining eyes and scolded lightly, "Now who needs to be serious?" while wrapping one arm around her shoulders. There was no force behind his words, and the twinkle in his own eyes belied his amusement. While he was glad she had a great sense of comedic timing, nothing funny could solve the clusterfuck he managed to make of his partnership. Chris' singular focus slid back to the problem of one Leonard McCoy, and he let out a frustrated growl. Pike allowed the room to drop into silence again, contemplating his next move in his head.

"What are you thinking about now, Chris?" Lynn asked. When Pike grimaced in reply, Lynn prodded, "Come on. This is part of the problem. Talk to me."

Chris' face turned into an impressive homage to McCoy's famous scowl. After a couple more long seconds he said flatly, "This has to work for him, Lynn."

"What?"

"This," Pike answered, motioning with his hands in a small circle in front of his chest. "This whole becoming-a-cop thing. He went all in with this job, and if he washes out, I don't know what he'll do or where he'll go."

Lynn straightened up and looked her husband in the eye. Deadpanned, she said everything she needed to say in one simple sentence, strong and secure in conviction and force. "We are _not_ going to let that happen."

"No," Pike replied, looking up at the ceiling while he let his thoughts wander. The swirling vortex of uncertainty hung over his head like a dark cloud, reminding him that he very nearly failed. That did not surprise him; what did catch him off guard was that the twisting feeling inside his gut was directly in line with the _who_ in the equation instead of the _what_. Dare he think it, McCoy, the cranky, smart-assed, obstreperous and opinionated young man somehow managed to endear himself a place near Sergeant Pike's heart. If the situation weren't so damned serious, Chris might have laughed out loud with the revelation.

But he still needed to focus. With a new-found resolve, Pike met Lynn's determined, steely stare and said with equal assuredness, "No, we're not."

There was simply too much on the line.

* * *

><p><em>Two Weeks Later<em>

'Interesting' wasn't appropriate enough of a word to describe the past two weeks of Chris Pike's life. Since 'The Incident', as he and Lynn nicknamed it, Pike tried to go about his day to day with McCoy as naturally as possible. It was still tense, the first shift back, but the pair eventually fell into their accustomed and steady rhythm. An outside observer wouldn't notice that anything was poles apart, but both men could feel a lot changing. The attitude in the squad was different, and for the better. It was lighter and friendlier, even if Pike and McCoy each understood that complete revolution could never happen overnight.

From the shielded, sidelong glances, Pike could still see that McCoy was suspicious of his motives, and he was the first to admit he'd given Len little reason to think otherwise. It was probably strange for the young man, watching his mentor go from somewhat distant and professional to almost laid back in caring, all in the space of a fortnight. Of all the things Chris' wife helped him understand, one of the big bullet points was that not all men were created equal. His training methods worked perfectly fine on the previous men under his tutelage, but McCoy was different. The distanced way in which he was brought into the law enforcement community was clearly a broken method. He just hadn't realized it.

Thankfully, Chris found his second chance, and he was willing to make the most of it, even if it was terribly awkward at times. He was trying, even if he felt like he was floundering.

"I've been given an ultimatum by my wife," Pike said out of nowhere while the pair was enjoying a sit down lunch.

McCoy raised his eyes from the newspaper he was studying and mumbled, "I'm not sure I even want to know."

"You're going to pass up the prospect of juicy details? I didn't think you had it in you," Pike said in response while he took a sip of Charley's Diner's official cop coffee, the Blue Brew.

McCoy pursed his lips and raised one eyebrow. He shifted in his side of the booth, dredged a French fry through a disturbing amount of ketchup and stuffed the thing into his mouth. Sucking down a healthy gulp of water, he replied, "I have a stronger will to live than I have need for gossip. Your wife scares me."

Chris laughed into his coffee mug. "Don't say that too loudly, Len. She doesn't need any more encouragement than she already gets."

"No kidding," McCoy replied while he picked up the third-pound mushroom and Swiss burger occupying most of his plate. When he finished examining it for any possible flaws, Len lifted his eyes and asked, "All right. Tell me. What's this ultimatum from Lynn about?"

Pike took another healthy sip of his coffee, grimacing as it burned a path down his throat. Saying a silent prayer that it wasn't too much too soon, he said, "You, actually. My wife wanted me to ask you if you had any plans on Sunday."

"Sunday? No, I don't think so. Why? Do we need to pick up and extra shift?" McCoy queried automatically, mentally going over what few events he'd managed to pencil in on his virtually non-existent social calendar.

"No, it's not work at all. Every year at about this time, I host a barbecue to mark off the unofficial beginning of summer. It's a low-key thing - a couple of guys from the shift and their families. No more than a dozen people," Pike explained in a manner he hoped could be considered nonchalant. He waved a piece of bacon around in the air as he talked, continuing with, "You're more than welcome if you don't have anything else going."

McCoy's face fell. "I don't want to impose on you guys. I'm sure there are a lot more interesting people you could invite than the rookie you've been saddled with."

Chris swore silently in his head. He didn't miss the indecision dancing across his partner's face, nor did the flash of panic that appeared and disappeared in McCoy's eyes go unnoticed. Lighter, he said, "I promise we don't bite. You'll know a couple of people there, other than Lynn and me. AJ Harris always shows up. And, you'll get to meet Jack Carlson, one of the guys I went through the Academy with. He's a good man with an even better sense of humor. You'll like him. Between him and AJ, they both know plenty of embarrassing shit about me, so stock up while you have the chance."

McCoy chewed nervously on his lower lip, brain spinning a mile a minute to think of a way, any possible way, to get out of this party. When none was forthcoming, he said lamely, "I'll get back to you."

For his part, Pike rolled his eyes. It was a delicate balance he needed to strike, and he was doing it, for all intents and purposes, while flying blind. Earnest was probably the best way to play it, and Chris hoped that his instincts were right. He leaned in on his elbows and looked McCoy straight in the eye. "Len, look. I don't want you to feel like you have to come. Don't get me wrong - I'd love to see you there, because despite you and your opinions being a pain in my ass at least once a day, you deserve the invite. But if you don't want to come or if you have something else to do, I'd understand that."

The young cop blinked, astonished, once, then twice. His eyes narrowed suspiciously, and Pike wondered just what the hell was going through his head. Chris worked to school his face to impassivity while Len chewed through his options, waiting silently for some type of answer. Finally, he asked, "What's the catch?"

"There is none, I swear to you. It's just some old cops bitching about our jobs while we grill burgers and drink beer," Pike replied, holding the palms of his hands up in front of his face. Though he tried to keep his voice light, there was a part of him that couldn't help feel sorry for McCoy. There was no logical reason that he should be as suspicious of other humans at his young age, and Chris felt another pang of regret when he realized he'd almost certainly contributed to the problem.

Len cocked his head to the side. Pike could see the young man sizing up the situation, wondering if the deviation from his hermetic existence was worth a little social contact. Shaking his head, McCoy said, "What the hell? All right. I'm in. But, you have to answer me a question if I come."

"Name it."

Deadpanned, McCoy asked, "Does she always make you invite your FNG?"

The sly smile that crept up the side of Pike's mouth matched the twinkle in his eyes. "Only when she likes them, McCoy. Feel blessed. I promise you she's not going to come after you with a pastry spatula unless you really, really piss her off."

"I'll do my best to make sure that doesn't happen. God help us all if that woman ever gets her hands on a gun."

Pike barked out a loud laugh. "No shit!"

**-FIN-**


End file.
